[Graphics] [Physics] [Speaker Bios]
This information is subject to change.
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SPEAKERS BIOS [Graphics] [Physics] [Speaker Bios] This information is subject to change. |
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The speakers at the Game Technology Seminars are leaders in their fields, whether academics or engineers. Speakers are carefully chosen to match expertise with the topics and themes of the seminars. |
David Wu
David Wu is a programmer at Pseudo Interactive. He is
currently searching for ways to exploit the great body of
research dedicated to dynamic
simulation of physical systems.
Lectures: |
| Leonidas Guibas Professor Guibas heads the Geometric Computation group in the Computer Science Department of Stanford University. He is a member of the Computer Graphics and Robotics Laboratories. He works on algorithms for sensing, modeling, reasoning, rendering, and acting on the physical world. Professor Guibas' interests span computational geometry, geometric modeling, computer graphics, computer vision, robotics, and discrete algorithms --- all areas in which he has published and lectured extensively. Current activities focus on animation, collision detection, efficient rendering, motion planning, image data-bases, and molecular simulations. Leonidas Guibas obtained his Ph.D. from Stanford in 1976, under the supervision of Donald Knuth. His main subsequent employers were Xerox PARC, MIT, and DEC/SRC. He has been at Stanford since 1984 as Professor of Computer Science. Professor Guibas was recently elected an ACM Fellow. Lectures: |
Van Emden Henson
leads the Numerical Methods Group in the Center for Applied
Scientific Computing at Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory. His research interests focus on algebraic
multigrid (AMG) and AMG on massively parallel computers. In
addition, he works on nonlinear methods, especially nonlinear
multigrid methods. Prior to joining the staff at LLNL, Van
was on the mathematics faculty at the Naval Postgraduate
School. Van is the coauthor, with Bill Briggs and Steve
McCormick, of the second edition of Briggs' book, A Multigrid
Tutorial. He and Bill Briggs previously coauthored the book
The DFT: An Owner's Manual for the Discrete Fourier
Transform. Prior to mathematics, Van worked as a geophysicist
in oil exploration, and before that as a stage director and
designer.
Lectures: |
David Baraff
joined Pixar Animation Studios in 1998 as a Senior Animation
Scientist in Pixar's research and development group. Prior to
his arrival at Pixar, he was an Associate Professor of
Robotics, and Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon
University. David Baraff received his Ph.D. in computer
science from Cornell University. Before and during his
graduate studies, he also worked at Bell Laboratories'
Computer Technology Research Laboratory doing computer
graphics research, including real-time 3D interactive
animation and games. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1992, he
joined the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University. In 1995, he
was named an ONR Young Investigator. His research interests
include physical simulation and modeling for computer graphics
and animation.
Lectures: |
Sean Barrett
worked for six years at Looking Glass Studios; along with
programming contributions to four other games, he created the
graphics technology used for the Thief series as well as
System Shock 2. Sean also presented at the HardCore Technical
Seminars in 1999.
Lectures: |
Jonathan Blow
is co-founder and lead game programmer at Bolt Action Software
in San Francisco, California.
Lectures: |
Tony DeRose
is currently a Senior Scientist at Pixar Animation Studios. He
received a BS in Physics in 1981 from the University of
California, Davis; in 1985 he received a Ph.D. in Computer
Science from the University of California, Berkeley. He
received a Presidential Young Investigator award from the
National Science Foundation in 1989. In 1995 he was selected
as a finalist in the software category of the Discover Awards
for Technical Innovation. In 1998, he was a major contributor
to the Oscar winning short film "Geri's game", and in 1999 he
received the ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement
Award. From September 1986 to December 1995 Dr. DeRose was a
Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the
University of Washington. He has served on various technical
program committees including SIGGRAPH, and from 1988 through
1994 was an associate editor of ACM Transactions on
Graphics. To date, Dr. DeRose has written more than 50
scientific papers, 8 patent applications, and one book. His
research has focused on mathematical methods for surface
modeling, data fitting, and the use of multiresolution
techniques. Recent projects the use of subdivision surfaces in
character animation and the construction of animation controls
for expressive characters.
Lectures: |
Mathieu Desbrun
is an assistant professor in Computer Science at the
University of Southern California (USC), and a faculty member
at Caltech where he held a post-doctoral position from '98 to
'99. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Graphics and Vision in
'97 in Grenoble, France, after being awarded an engineering
degree in Computer Science with distinction. His main research
focus is physically-based animation and modeling. He is
particularly interested in designing efficient and robust
techniques using irregular sampling. He is currently the head
of the Graphics Immersion lab.
Lectures: |
| Ron Fedkiw After obtaining a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics at UCLA, he spent time as a member of both the UCLA Mathematics Department and the Caltech Aeronautics Department before joining the Stanford Computer Science Department. The work at UCLA and Caltech was focused on the design of new algorithms for a large variety of application areas mostly related to computational fluid dynamics. Sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) at UCLA and the Department of Energy (DOE) at Caltech, this work led to strong collaborative relationships with a number of scientists at the national laboratories including both Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). Besides the Department of Defense related work, he has been active in both computer graphics and image processing including 2 years of consulting with Arete Entertainment and 1 year of consulting with Centropolis FX. Lectures: |
Nick Foster
is a member of Pacific Data Image's (PDI) Research and
Development department. A graduate from the University of
Pennsylvania, Foster holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science with an
emphasis on animating liquids and gases. A recognized expert
in the field of animating water for computer graphics, Foster
has published several academic papers on the subject, and
received a 1998 Technical Achievement Award from the Academy
of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognising his
work. Prior to pursuing his graduate degrees in the United
States, Foster worked as a detector systems developer at a
nuclear power station in Grenoble, France.
Lectures: |
Igor Guskov
is currently a Research Fellow at the Caltech Department of
Computer Science. His research interests lie in the general
area of multiresolution methods for efficient processing of
meshes representing complex geometric shapes. He received his
BS degree from Moscow State University, and his PhD in applied
mathematics from Princeton University. In his thesis Igor
introduced ``irregular subdivision'', a crucial component for
building wavelet representations on irregular mesh
hierarchies. This wavelet transform is very useful for
denoising, enhancement, filtering, and editing of irregular
meshes. More recently, he co-invented Normal Meshes and a
remeshing procedure producing meshes whose geometry is
represented with just one float per vertex. These meshes are
ideally suited for further compression. Igor is also
interested in interactive geometry creation and applications
of wavelets in scientific computing. Among many other venues
he has published several papers in Siggraph.
Lectures: |
Chris Hecker
is co-founder of the Game Technology Seminars. He's the
Technical Director of definition six, inc., a small game
company working on high end physics simulation in games, and
the Editor-at-Large of Game Developer Magazine.
Lectures: |
| Christoph Hoffmann Before joining the Purdue faculty, Professor Hoffmann taught at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He has also been visiting professor at the Christian-Albrechts University in Kiel, West Germany (1980), and at Cornell University (1984-1986). His research focuses on geometric and solid modeling, its applications to manufacturing and science, and the simulation of physical systems. The research includes, in particular, research on geometric constraint solving and the semantics of generative, feature-based design. Professor Hoffmann is the author of Group-Theoretic Algorithms and Graph Isomorphism, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 136, Springer-Verlag and of Geometric and Solid Modeling: An Introduction, published by Morgan Kaufmann, Inc. Lectures: |
Jeff Lander
is co-founder of the Game Technology Seminars. Jeff co-founded
Darwin 3D, LLC, where he pursues game and interactive
development. Jeff has been the Graphic Content Columnist for
Game Developer Magazine since 1998.
Lectures: |
Casey Muratori
is the lead developer on Granny, RAD Game Tools' licensable
character animation system and 3D toolkit.
Lectures: |
James O'Brien
is an Assistant Professor in the EECS department of the
University of California's Berkeley campus. His primary area
of research involves the physically based simulation of
complex deformable systems to generate motion for use in
computer generated animation. James received his Doctorate in
Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Lectures: |
Ken Perlin
is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer
Science and the director of the Media Research Laboratory at
the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York
University. He is also the director of the NYU Center of
Advanced Technology, sponsored by the New York State Science
and Technology Foundation. He completed his Ph.D. in 1986 from
the New York University Department of Computer Science. His
dissertation received the Janet Fabri award for outstanding
Doctoral Dissertation. He received his B.A. in theoretical
mathematics at Harvard University in 1979. His research
interests include graphics, animation, and multimedia. In 1991
he was a recipient of a Presidential Young Investigator Award
from the National Science Foundation. In 1997 he was a
recipient of a Technical Achievement Award from the Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his noise and turbulence
procedural texturing techniques, which are widely used in
feature films and television. Dr. Perlin was Head of Software
Development at R/GREENBERG Associates in New York, NY from
1984 through 1987. Prior to that, from 1979 to 1984, he was
the System Architect for computer generated animation at
Mathematical Applications Group, Inc., Elmsford, NY. TRON was
the first movie for which his name got onto the credits. He
has served on the Board of Directors of the New York chapter
of ACM/SIGGRAPH, has been a member of ACM and ACM SIGGRAPH,
and has been a senior reviewer for a number of technical
conferences.
Lectures: |
Peter Schröder
is currently on the faculty at Caltech's Computer Science
department where he directs the Multi-Res Modeling Group. For
the past seven years his research has focused on applications
of multiresolution methods to many modeling and numerical
simulation problems occurring in computer graphics and
scientific computing. In particular he and his collaborators
and students have developed wavelet methods for global
illumination computations, new subdivision methods,
hierarchical decompositions for arbitrary topology surfaces
and most recently the best surface compression methods so
far. His current research interests focus on Digital Geometry
Processing, both its theoretical underpinnings and highly
scalable algorithms for it. He is recognized worldwide as an
expert in these areas and has received numerous honors for
it. Most recently he was named a Packard Foundation Fellow.
Lectures: |
Brian Sharp
worked for CogniToy on the graphics, user interface, and
physics technology for MindRover. He has since worked for 3dfx
on various OpenGL drivers, and spends his time these days
plotting his escape from Dartmouth College this coming June.
Lectures: |
Jos Stam
is currently a Research Scientist at Alias|wavefront's Seattle
office. He was born in the Netherlands and educated in Geneva,
Switzerland. He holds a PhD degree in computer science from
the University of Toronto. His research interests cover most
areas of computer graphics such as natural phenomena modeling,
physics-based animation, rendering and shape modeling. He has
published papers at SIGGRAPH and elsewhere in all of these
areas.
Lectures: |
Subhash Suri
is a professor of Computer Science at University of California,
Santa Barbara. Before coming to UCSB, he was an associate professor at
Washington University in St. Louis, and a Member of Technical Staff at
Bellcore. Subhash Suri received his Ph.D. in computer science from the
Johns Hopkins University in 1987. His research interests include
computational geometry, graphics, and networking. Currently, he is
also working on design and analysis of electronic marketplaces.
Lectures: |
Henry Moreton
joined NVIDIA in the fall of 1998 as a member of the
architecture group. From 1984 to 1998 he worked at Silicon
Graphics. In 1992 he received a Ph.D. from the University of
California, Berkeley. He has published in the areas of curve
and surface modeling, rendering, texture mapping, video and
image compression, and unmanned submarine control. He has
patents issued and pending in the areas of optics, video
compression, graphics, system and CPU architecture, and curve
& surface modeling & rendering. Current interests include
alternative representations for geometry, API design and
hardware architecture of programmable graphics devices.
Lectures: |
Doug James
is currently completing a Ph.D. at the University
of British Columbia in the Institute of Applied Mathematics on
efficient methods for interactive simulation of elastostatic models.
He is generally interested in the use of mathematics in computer
graphics and simulation.
Lectures: |
Rob Thacker
is a post doctoral researcher in the Astronomy Department at
U.C. Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. from the University of
Alberta (1999) and holds a Masters degree in Mathematics from
King's College, London (1993). His research focuses on the
development and use of gravito-hydrodynamic algorithms for
simulating galaxy formation at high resolution. He is a member
of three international computational cosmology research
collaborations.
Lectures: |
| Contact info@techsem.com or call us at 310/ 375-6602. |