Demircan Tas

t a s d @ m i t . e d u
Google Scholar / GitHub / Twitter

About me

I am a PhD student in EECS at MIT, studying generative methads for design computation and digital fabrication in HCI through computer vision.

This website is a work in progress, please follow the links below for previous versions.


Quick links: HTMAA / old website / Curriculum Vitae


Research Interests

I am a PhD student from the HCI-E Group in CSAIL at MIT. I combine the theoretical discussions of the Design & Computation with experiments into latent spaces of generative multimodal AI models to improve parametric and algorithmic design paradigms. I co-founded Construct(), a speech/gesture to blocks AI for video games with building mechanics. Prior to my work at MIT, I built an image to HBIM (heritage building information modeling)k Construct(), a speech/gesture to blocks AI for Minecraft. Prior to my work at MIT, I built an image to HBIM (heritage building information modeling) pipeline for architectural heritage in Anatolia.

Please click the following to expand details:

Design & Computation: Questions into perception and shared embeddings

In the study of design computation for architecture and industrial applications, parametric and algorithmic design occupy a central role. However, these approaches map design parameters to narrow solution spaces that often exclude the changes presented by iterations on drawings or physical prototypes. My ongoing thesis work combines image and text conditioned diffusion encoders to sample control vertices for weighted Bezier splines (NURBS) in million-dimensional latent vector spaces. Sampling from trajectories in the latent space using an INR (implicit neural representation) decoder, we find useful non-linear interpolations among 3d objects to mimic manipulation of pseudo parametric transformations. This work has potential use cases in architecture and construction, as well as industrial and medical applications' design. For this work, I created a custom NURBS implementation, optimized for splines in 1,000,000 dimensional vector spaces.
Inverse Drawings, Pixel Rules

Virtual Reality and HCI: Work examples from my research at ESI

The Gorge VR project for MIT Climate Machine


Wolman Game for MIT Urban Metabolism Group

Construct(): Speech to Minecraft blocks

Design X pitch for Construct()

Hands on (or off) demo of Construct()



I collaborate with peers from diverse background to develop imaginative AI.
while developing natural and precise interfaces.

Demoreel (click to expand)

A brief demoreel of projects I worked on during my studies at MIT

Prototypes (click to expand)

Pixelation board: Non electronic board composed of varying light diffusers for optical computing





Recent Work (All papers)

Parametric Paint-Over (previously Sketch-Vision)
Demircan Tas
SMArchS thesis.
[DSpace] [Presentation]
TeamCAD - A Multimodal Interface for Remote Computer Aided Design
Demircan Tas, Dimitrios Chatzinikolis
Subjects report for 6.835, Intelligent Multimodal User Interfaces at MIT, Spring 2022.
[Paper] [Video]
UNVEILING SPACES: Architecturally meaningful semantic descriptions from images of interior spaces
Demircan Tas, Rohit Priyadarshi Sanatani
Project report for 6.869, Advances in Computer Vision at MIT, Spring 2022.
[Paper]

Subjects TA'd

6.902(0): How to Make (almost) Anything (Fall 2022)
6.8300/6.8301: Advances in Computer Vision (Spring 2023)
6.8300/6.8301: Advances in Computer Vision (Spring 2024)

Subjects Taken

6.943: How to Make (almost) Anything (Fall 2021)
6.835: Intelligent Multimodal User Interfaces (Fall 2021)
6.819/6.869: Advances in Computer Vision (Spring 2022)
6.8610: Quantitative Methods for Natural Language Processing (Fall 2022)
6.S980 Machine Learning for Inverse Graphics Fall 2022
11.246: DesignX Accelerator (Spring 2023)