Digital Commons Network^™

When Slides Replace Thinking: How Powerpoint Culture Undermines Conceptual Learning In Engineering Education, Shahin Nayyeri Amiri, Hamid Eisazadeh

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Engineering education has gradually shifted from deep conceptual teaching to a culture dominated by presentation slides. In many universities today, core courses such as Statics, Dynamics, and Mechanics of Materials are taught through PowerPoint files rather than through reasoning, derivation, and problem solving. While slide-based instruction may appear efficient, it encourages passive learning and has severely weakened students’ ability to think independently and make sound engineering judgments. Traditionally, these fundamental courses were taught by seasoned instructors who had mastered the subjects and took genuine pride in explaining complex ideas with clarity and passion. They guided students through the logic behind …

Nature-Based Solutions For Urban Resilience And Environmental Justice In Underserved Coastal Communities: A Case Study On Oakleaf Forest In Norfolk, Va, Farzaneh Soflaei, Mujde Erten-Unal, Carol L. Considine, Faeghe Borhani

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Climate change and sea-level change (SLC) are intensifying flooding in U.S. coastal communities, with disproportionate impacts on Black and minority neighborhoods that face displacement, economic hardship, and heightened health risks. In Norfolk, Virginia, sea levels are projected to rise by at least 0.91 m (3 ft) by 2100, placing underserved neighborhoods such as Oakleaf Forest at particular risk. This study investigates the compounded impacts of flooding at both the building and urban scales, situating the work within the framework of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). A mixed-method, community-based approach was employed, integrating literature review, field observations, and community …

Multi-Isotope Tracing Reveals Nitrate And Sulfate Sources And Fate Across Contrasting Activity Zones In A Semi-Arid Basin Of Northern China, Chang Yue, Ruizhong Gao, Limin Duan, Tianke Su, Xixi Wang, Tingxi Liu, Guoqiang Wang

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

In semi-arid surface water-groundwater systems, nitrate (NO₃^–) and sulfate (SO₄²^–) are jointly influenced by natural processes and anthropogenic activities, yet how their sources, transformations, and export vary across contrasting activity zones remains insufficiently understood. Integrating hydrochemistry, multiple stable isotopes, a Bayesian isotope mixing model, and representative-section flux analysis, this study investigated the source compositions, transformation processes, and export differences of NO₃^– and SO₄²^– in the Dahei River Basin.   New hydrological insights for the region: Results showed greater SO₄²^– enrichment in high-activity zones, whereas NO₃^– exceedance was more prominent in low-activity zones. In …

Short-Term Response Mechanisms Of Water Quantity And Quality Of Daihai Lake Under Temperature-Driven Changes, Hao Zhang, Xiaohong Shi, Xianhua Li, Junping Lu, Ruizhong Gao, Xixi Wang, Shuhao Zhang, Longmei Xie, Yu Liu

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Temperature-driven mechanisms involving complex feedback and lag that affect the evolution of hydrological processes and ecological functions in cold- and arid-region lakes represent a core scientific issue in current hydrology and lake ecology research. In this study, based on month-scale temperature and environmental factor data from Daihai Lake in Inner Mongolia from January to December 2023, statistical methods (redundancy analysis, Tukey's test analysis, correlation analysis, structural equation modeling), time series analysis methods (dynamic time warping), and machine learning methods (random forest) were combined. A hierarchical and phased response framework was constructed that encompassed driver identification, path tracing, lag characterization, and …

Modeling Hepa Filter Media Performance And Evaluation Of Filtration Leak Test Success, Daniel M. Abraham, Steven J. Eckels, Shahin N. Amiri

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

This research presents a cost-effective microscale modeling analysis of high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter media. We analyzed leak-free and leaking media with known leak sizes. A three-dimensional fibrous model with non-homogeneous fiber diameters (0.2–2 µm) and a packing density of 7.5% was developed to replicate a HEPA filter sheet (H14) microstructure. The objective was to simulate and analyze the pressure drop and collection efficiency of nanofibrous media for aerosol particles with a diameter of d_p ≤ 0.5 µm. The results were compared to prior experimental and theoretical models, exhibiting a high level of agreement with pressure drop and efficiency …

Resilient Built Environment: An Overview On Design Strategies For Coastal Adaptation To Sea Level Rise, Farzaneh Soflaei, Gelareh Abdolzadeh, Navid Ziaee, Mohammad Amin Jafari, Faeghe Borhani

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper delves into the escalating risks faced by urban coastal communities due to tidal and storm flooding, exacerbated by climate change-induced Sea Level Rise (SLR). Projections indicate a potential increase in sea levels by at least 3 feet by 2100, with historical data revealing an average annual rise of 1.2-1.7 mm since the 1900s. With over 300 million individuals inhabiting coastal areas, low-lying regions emerge as particularly vulnerable to the impacts of SLR. This accelerated rise amplifies the significant challenge of nuisance flooding, a local-scale issue aggravated by high tide and winds, leading to inundation, road closures, infrastructure deterioration, …

Chesapeake Bay Water Clarity: Challenges And Successes, Jessica S. Turner, Carl T. Friedrichs, David B. Parrish, Kelsey A. Fall

OES Faculty Publications

The Chesapeake Bay is a large estuarine system spanning multiple jurisdictions and serves as a model for estuarine health worldwide. Historically, nutrient loading degraded water quality, prompting the need for regulation. Water clarity, one component of water quality, is vital for benthic communities and serves as a key indicator of overall ecosystem health. Here, physical resuspension and salinity gradients, nutrient and sediment inputs, production of organic detritus by phytoplankton, and benthic communities all interact to drive clarity patterns, with high spatial variability. Trends over the last 50 years show improvement, though with a temporary increase in organic detritus in response …

A Tale Of Two Microbialities: Stromatolites And Microbially Induced Sedimentary Structures, Nora Noffke, Stanley M. Awramik

OES Faculty Publications

Microbialites are biosedimentary structures built by microbial mats. Five microbialite groups are distinguished: stromatolites, thrombolites, dendrolites, leiloites and microbially induced sedimentary structures (MISS). This contribution discusses the two most abundant microbialite groups in marine settings, stromatolites and MISS. Microbial interactions with clastic sediment are very similar in both stromatolite and MISS formation. However, in stromatolites, syngenetic carbonate production caused by photoautotrophic and heterotrophic metabolisms and by calcimicrobes also takes place. More so, carbonate may precipitate within the extracellular polymeric substances. Due to the various carbonate forming processes as well as recrystallisation, the microscopic mat fabrics within stromatolite laminae are rarely …

Seasonal And Geologic Controls On Submarine Groundwater Discharge-Derived Nutrient Fluxes To Two Coastal Embayments, Moira Taylor, Joseph J. Tamborski, Aaron Alorda-Kleinglass, Nathaniel Maynard

OES Faculty Publications

Submarine groundwater discharge and porewater exchange are critical but often overlooked sources of nutrients to coastal systems. This study investigates how sediment permeability and summer-winter seasonal dynamics influence the magnitude and biogeochemistry of nutrient fluxes from submarine groundwater discharge and porewater exchange. Reaction rates in the subterranean estuary were used to identify the transformations and drivers of nutrient loading in two geologically distinct embayments in the U.S. East Coast: the highly permeable Peconic Bay estuary (NY), and the surficially fine-grained coastal embayments of the southern Delmarva Peninsula (VA). We applied radium isotope mass balances to distinguish total submarine groundwater discharge …

Diatom Community Response To High And Low Iron Upwelling Plumes In The California Current System, Sveinn V. Einarsson, Kimberly Powell, Claire Till, Tyler Coale, P. Dreux Chappell

OES Faculty Publications

Diatoms are important primary producers, accounting for most of the oceanic production and carbon export relative to other photosynthetic eukaryotes. There are important differences among diatom species that enable them to proliferate in different environments. Some have nutrient storage capabilities or lower nutrient quotas suited for oligotrophic oceans. Bloom-forming diatoms are typically found in nutrient-rich coastal waters where they respond quickly to nutrient pulses and can influence biogeochemical cycling in the ocean after blooms. As many physiological differences affect biomass and export, it is important to better understand how physical and chemical parameters influence diatom community composition, especially in dynamic …

Characterizing The Unique Chemical Imprint Of On-Axis, Lower-Temperature Hydrothermal Flow To The Deep Ocean (Southern East Pacific Rise, 16.5°-18.0°S), Laura E. Moore, Randelle M. Bundy, Joseph A. Resing, Scott White, Tamara Baumberger, Peter N. Sedwick, Nathaniel J. Buck, Anson M. Antriasian, Isaac Keohane, Bettina M. Sohst, Sharon L. Walker, Christopher R. German

OES Faculty Publications

In addition to high-temperature vents, lower-temperature flow (LTF) (< 300°C) is abundant along mid-ocean ridges and contributes globally-important fluxes of heat and water along with largely-unconstrained geochemical influences on the ocean. We examined the impact of on-axis LTF on the chemical composition of the overlying water column (< 40 m above seafloor) along the 16.5°-18.0°S sector of the ultrafast-spreading southern East Pacific Rise using autonomous underwater vehicle Sentry surveys and conductivity-temperature-depth rosette casts. LTF sites were typically spatially isolated from high-temperature systems and imparted unique chemical signatures to the overlying ocean. Water column samples impacted by LTF exhibited low particulate iron:sulfur ratios and high methane: total-dissolvable manganese ratios, whereas samples influenced by high-temperature venting exhibited opposite trends. We confirmed that LTF imparts a distinct and measurable chemical signature to the water column, independent from high-temperature vents. Isolated, on-axis LTF will be important to consider when assessing hydrothermal circulation impacts upon ocean biogeochemistry.

Autonomous Float Data Reveal Decoupled Trends In Chlorophyll And Stratification In The Indian Ocean, Marufa Ishaque, Sophie Clayton, John Klinck

OES Faculty Publications

Recent studies have shown that the Indian Ocean is warming significantly, but how this warming impacts primary production is largely unresolved due to a relative lack of depth-resolved biological observations. In this study, we have used Biogeochemical-Argo data from 2013 to 2022, comprising over 9,000 individual profiles, to examine regional patterns and trends in depth-integrated chlorophyll, depth-integrated net primary production and stratification in the northern and Equatorial Indian Ocean. Our analysis shows that water column stratification is increasing in the majority of the study area, with the highest rate of increase observed in the western Bay of Bengal. At the …

Testing The Limits Of Provenance Analysis From Basaltic Fluvial Sediment Near Sandvatn, Iceland, As A Mars Analog, Audrey R. Putnam, Kirsten L. Siebach, Michael T. Thorpe, Valerie M. Tu, Elizabeth B. Rampe, Candice C. Bedford, Gelu Costin, Joseph J. Tamborski

OES Faculty Publications

Detrital sediments that accumulate downstream and are preserved in sedimentary rocks can allow characterization of geologic formations that are inaccessible for spatial or temporal reasons. However, mixing, sorting, and alteration of sediment during transport may complicate reconstruction of protolith characteristics. We test the preservation of three key provenance signals in coarse fluvial sand at a Mars analog watershed in Iceland to determine whether detrital sediments capture (a) watershed magmatic chemical variation, (b) textural indicators of lava-water interaction during eruption and cooling, and (c) hydrothermal alteration. Specifically, we tested whether diagnostic variations in rock mineralogy, chemistry, and texture can be recovered …

Microbial Mats In Dinosaur Ichnocoenoses, Nora Noffke, Paul C. Murphy, Roger C. Buntin, Martin G. Lockley

OES Faculty Publications

Until now, the significance of microbial mats in preservation of dinosaur tracks and in reconstructing the palaeoenvironment in which dinosaurs roamed was rarely studied. Dinosaur tracks are commonly found close to ancient aquatic bodies where moist sediment had once allowed footstep registration. At such sites, epibenthic or endobenthic microbial mats may have developed as well and may have led to exquisite track preservation. Microbial mats in coastal, lacustrine or flood plain environments cause 'microbially induced sedimentary structures—MISS', which are micobialites found in sandy or evaporitic settings. The microbial structures record environmental parameters including meteorological conditions that existed at the time …

Recirculated Submarine Groundwater Discharge Dominates Nutrient Inputs And Enhances Eutrophication Risk In A Coastal Lagoon, Júlia Rodriguez-Puig, Clara Ruiz-González, Marc Diego-Feliu, Irene Alorda-Montiel, Aaron Alorda-Kleinglass, Daniel Romano-Gude, Andrea G. Bravo, Júlia Dordal-Soriano, Javier Gilabert, Sophia Bergeler, Celine Lavergne, Gemma Casas, Marisol Manzano, Jordi Garcia-Orellana, Valentí Rodellas

OES Faculty Publications

Submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) is a widely recognized pathway for nutrient transport to coastal systems. Prior studies overlook the unique biogeochemical signatures of different SGD pathways, neglecting their differences in biogeochemical transformations and spatiotemporal factors. Here, we present an integrated assessment of nutrient delivery through three SGD pathways (fresh SGD, long‐scale recirculated SGD, and short‐scale porewater exchange), alongside surface water inputs, to evaluate their seasonality and impact on nutrient dynamics in a coastal lagoon. We conducted five field surveys in March, July, and November 2021, July 2024, and March 2025 in the Mar Menor lagoon, an ecosystem facing severe ecological …

Modeling Upper Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics In Response To Interannual Sea-Ice Variability In The Western Antarctic Peninsula, Catherine R. Czajka, Jessica S. Turner, Sharon Stammerjohn, Heather H. Kim, Oscar Schofield, Benjamin T. Saenz, Scott C. Doney

OES Faculty Publications

In the Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP), marine plankton dynamics are tightly linked to the interannual variability in environmental conditions, including phenological shifts in sea-ice seasonality. To explore these linkages, we use a 1-dimensional vertical ocean-ice-ecosystem model (KPP-Eco-Ice, or KEI) that simulates physical and ecosystem conditions at a continental shelf mooring location in the Palmer Long Term Ecological Research program sampling grid. KEI allows for year-round examination of the ecosystem in a region where in situ observations on the shelf are limited to January. Comparisons are made between seasonal sea-ice retreat, mixed layer depth, primary productivity, and phytoplankton relative abundance, grazing, …

Contribution Of Non-Linear Internal Waves To Marine Net Primary Production Has Been Underestimated, Xiaoju Pan, Tung-Yuan Ho, George T. F. Wong, Jen-Hua Tai, Shoude Guan, Fuh-Kuo Shiah

OES Faculty Publications

Field observations in the northern South China Sea (NSCS) indicate that elevated concentrations of chlorophyll a (Chl_a) associated with non-linear internal waves (NIWs) were more pronounced in the subsurface than at the sea-surface. At a given surface Chl_a, the vertically integrated Chl_a in an NIW-active area was 45% higher than that in an area where the NIW activities were minimal. As a result, net primary production (PP_eu) estimated from surface Chl_a from remote sensing by using the current Chl_a-based PP_eu model (e.g. VGPM) would have underestimated the true value by the same amount. If this correction is …

Unintended Consequences Of Estuarine Management Within The Trajectory Of Recovery: Examples From The Chesapeake Bay, Jessica S. Turner, Fei Da, Molly M. Mitchell

OES Faculty Publications

Estuaries are vital ecosystems that support biodiversity, human populations, and economic activities such as fisheries, aquaculture, and tourism. Managing estuarine systems often involves interventions to regulate sediment and nutrient inputs with the goal of improving water quality, and subsequently the economic values of the estuary. However, these management strategies can produce unintended consequences. The Chesapeake Bay is an estuary recovering from eutrophication which provides clear case studies for these patterns. In the Chesapeake Bay, decreased sediment inputs, resulting from shoreline stabilization and watershed modifications, can impair marsh resilience to sea level rise and disrupt sediment-light-algal interactions affecting water clarity. Likewise, …

Visualizing The Barely Detectable: Particle Characteristics Of The Elusive Aquatic Gel Phase In The Northeastern Subtropical Atlantic, Huanqing Huang, María Couret, Santiago Hernández-León, Alexander B. Bochdansky

OES Faculty Publications

Marine gels constitute a large yet poorly explored ocean carbon pool. Shadow imaging was tuned to detect particles at two sensitivity levels: high–optical density particles (HODP), resembling the particles captured by most imaging systems, and low–optical density particles (LODP), representing a vastly more abundant and gel-dominated pool. This method enabled us to map and characterize a portion of oceanic gels without filtration and staining. In the subtropical northeast Atlantic, LODP outnumbered HODP of the same size by one or two orders of magnitude. Morphology and particle number spectra differed greatly between the two pools, with LODP showing greater morphological homogeneity …

Aquatic Macrophytes As Nature-Based Solutions: Challenges And Opportunities Across Inland And Coastal Waters, Morgan Botrel, Roxane Maranger, Lindsay L. Trottier, Mathieu Cusson, Lars L. Iverson, Fanny Noisette, Christian Nozais, Katrine Turgeon, Andrea Bertolo, Thibaud André-Alphonse, Simon Bélanger, Arthur De Grandpré, Jean-Olivier Goyette, Sabine Hilt, Ladd Johnson, Valérie Langlois, Martin Laporte, Félix Lauzon, Brigitte Légaré, Anne Ola, Marie-Pomme Presne-Poissant, Matthieu Prugne, Caroline Susini, Richard Zimmerman

OES Faculty Publications

Macrophytes are foundation species whose use as nature-based solution (NbS) in aquatic ecosystems can help reduce climate change impacts while mitigating biodiversity loss. The discrepancy in research and application of macrophytes as NbS across inland and marine coastal ecosystems is an opportunity to expand the concept and learn from different approaches. We report on an initiative uniting marine and freshwater scientists that compared knowledge on macrophytes as NbS across realms, identified advances and gaps in their use, and synthesized challenges and opportunities for application. We conducted a bibliometric analysis and an expert participatory exercise around recent review papers. We reveal …

Revisiting The Life Cycle Of Margalefidinium Polykrikoides Group Iii, Eduardo Pérez-Vega, Kenneth N. Mertens, Pjotr Meyvisch, Margaret R. Mulholland

OES Faculty Publications

Dinoflagellates produce cysts as a strategy to withstand environmental stressors, with nutrient depletion generally considered a key trigger for cyst production. Resting cysts are thick-walled, typically composed of one to several layers, and characterized by a prolonged dormancy period. In contrast, pellicle cysts possess a thin, single wall and exhibit no dormancy or a markedly shorter dormancy than resting cysts of the same species. Margalefidinium polykrikoides produces pellicle and resting cysts, whereas its congener, M. fulvescens, has been shown to produce pumpkin-like structures. Using phase-contrast microscopy, time-lapse microscopy, FlowCam, and attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infrared microspectroscopy (ATR μ-FTIR), …

The Effects Of A Microplate On Plume-Ridge Interactions: Constraints From Comparing Easter And Juan Fernandez Microplates In The Eastern Pacific Ocean, Katherine Ames, Jennifer Georgen

OES Faculty Publications

This study investigates the nature of plume-ridge interactions near a tectonic microplate using mantle Bouguer anomaly (MBA) gravity calculations. The focus of this investigation is a comparison of the Easter and Juan Fernandez microplates, which are located in the eastern Pacific Ocean along the Pacific, Nazca, and Antarctic plate boundaries. The microplates have several similar characteristics, including general size, time of formation, and clockwise rotation within the larger bounding mid-ocean ridge systems. Unlike the Juan Fernandez microplate, however, the Easter microplate is located near a mantle plume (Easter/Salas y Gomez). Previously published geochemical data suggest that material from this plume …

Remote Sensing Of Particulate Organic Carbon And Phytoplankton Carbon In The Northern South China Sea, Xiaoju Pan, Tung-Yuan Ho, George T. F. Wong, Jen-Hua Tai, Lijuan Nie

OES Faculty Publications

Surface concentrations of particulate organic carbon (POC) and phytoplankton carbon (C_phy) in the northern South China Sea (NSCS) have been assessed successfully by remote sensing with appropriate regional tuning. Match-up comparisons between satellite derivations and field observations showed uncertainties of ± 28.5% for POC and ± 37.0% for C_phy. The satellite-derived climatological distributions are consistent with previous reports. In the open NSCS where phytoplankton growth is controlled primarily by the convective overturn, both POC and C_phy are higher in winter, associating with the effect of stronger northeast monsoons and surface cooling, than in summer, when …

Microplastics Suppress Copepod Grazing Of The Harmful Algal Bloom-Forming Dinoflagellate, Alexandrium Catenella, Megan Ladds, Christopher Gobler

OES Faculty Publications

While harmful algal blooms (HABs) are prominent occurrences in coastal zones where microplastic concentrations are maximal, the manner in which microplastics may influence food webs and HABs is poorly understood. This study explored how polystyrene microplastics affected copepod grazing of the saxitoxin-synthesizing harmful dinoflagellate, Alexandrium catenella, as well as a non-toxic dinoflagellate, Gymnodinium aureolum. Experiments were performed using multiple densities of microplastics (250 – 10,000 mL^–¹) of differing sizes (4 and 10 µm), as well as multiple densities of microalgae in microplates. The addition of 10 µm microplastics at densities of 1000 – 10,000 beads mL^{– …}

Cuneiform Tablet Collection, Sdsu Archives And Special Collections, Hilton M. Briggs Library

Archives Finding Aids

This collection consists of five Cuneiform Tablets, one Egyptian Tablet, and research and manuscript material created by Crystal J. Gamradt.

Academic Affairs Records, Sdsu Archives And Special Collections, Hilton M. Briggs Library

Archives Finding Aids

Prior to 1960, the administration of academic programs at South Dakota State College was managed independently by departments and offices. As administrative responsibilities expanded, the position of Dean of Academic Affairs was established in 1960 to centralize oversight, later becoming the Vice President for Academic Affairs in 1973. This role, reporting directly to the university president, oversees college deans and plays a key role in curriculum development, faculty governance, accreditation, and institutional planning. The office has been instrumental in shaping academic policies, managing faculty development, and ensuring compliance with higher education standards.

The Academic Affairs Records Collection (1902–2018) documents the …

Generalized Visual Relation Detection With Diffusion Models, Kaifeng Gao, Siqi Chen, Hanwang Zhang, Jun Xiao, Yueting Zhuang, Qianru Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Visual relation detection (VRD) aims to identify relationships (or interactions) between object pairs in an image. Although recent VRD models have achieved impressive performance, they are all restricted to pre-defined relation categories, while failing to consider the semantic ambiguity characteristic of visual relations. Unlike objects, the appearance of visual relations is always subtle and can be described by multiple predicate words from different perspectives, e.g., “ride” can be depicted as “race” and “sit on”, from the sports and spatial position views, respectively. To this end, we propose to model visual relations as continuous embeddings, and design diffusion models to achieve …

Benchmarking Gaslighting Negation Attacks Against Reasoning Models, Bin Zhu, Hailong Yin, Jingjing Chen, Yu Gang Jiang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Recent advances in reasoning-centric models promise improved robustness through mechanisms such as chain-of-thought prompting and test-time scaling. However, their ability to withstand gaslighting negation attacks—adversarial prompts that confidently deny correct answers—remains underexplored. In this paper, we conduct a systematic evaluation of three state-of-the-art reasoning models, i.e., OpenAI’s o4-mini, Claude-3.7-Sonnet and Gemini-2.5-Flash, across three multimodal benchmarks: MMMU, MathVista, and CharXiv. Our evaluation reveals significant accuracy drops (25–29% on average) following gaslighting negation attacks, indicating that even top-tier reasoning models struggle to preserve correct answers under manipulative user feedback. Built upon the insights of the evaluation and to further probe this vulnerability, …

Hybrid Learning And Optimization Methods For Solving Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem, Monit Sharma, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We propose a hybrid quantum–classical framework for the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP) that integrates the Augmented Lagrangian Method (ALM) with deep reinforcement learning (RL). Directly solving CVRP via Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE) requires a slack-based QUBO formulation, where converting inequalities to equalities greatly increases the qubit count. To circumvent this, we employ an ALM-based reformulation that enforces constraints through Lagrange terms instead of slack variables, drastically reducing quantum resource demands. An RL agent, trained with Soft Actor–Critic, adaptively tunes the Lagrange penalties to improve convergence and feasibility. Experiments show that RL-Q-ALM outperforms static-penalty and plain VQE baselines in both …

Realign: Text-To-Motion Generation Via Step-Aware Reward-Guided Alignment, Wanjiang Weng, Xiaofeng Tan, Junbo Wang, Guo-Sen Xie, Pan Zhou, Hongsong Wang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Text-to-motion generation, which synthesizes 3D human motions from text inputs, holds immense potential for applications in gaming, film, and robotics. Recently, diffusion-based methods have been shown to generate more diversity and realistic motion. However, there exists a misalignment between text and motion distributions in diffusion models, which leads to semantically inconsistent or low-quality motions. To address this limitation, we propose Reward-guided sampling Alignment (ReAlign), comprising a step-aware reward model to assess alignment quality during the denoising sampling and a reward-guided strategy that directs the diffusion process toward an optimally aligned distribution. This reward model integrates step-aware tokens and combines a …