People

Elizabeth Baron is a Solutions Executive at Unity Technologies, working on solutions for the industrial design, engineering and manufacturing space, to powers creation at all points in the product development process. Formerly, Elizabeth was a Technical Specialist in Immersive Realities at Ford Motor Company. She is the principal inventor of the Ford immersive Vehicle Environment (FiVE) process and technology, an immersive environment with high realism in experience, providing contextual data and real time global immersion for multiple disciplines across Ford.

Elizabeth attended her first SIGGRAPH in 1998 and her first SIGGRAPH Asia in 2019. She has contributed to the Strategy Team, and several unified juries.  Elizabeth and the Ford team revealed immersive 4K RTRT at Emerging Technologies SIGGRAPH 2015. She currently serves as the ACM SIGGRAPH Chair.

Jesse is currently the HD Mobile Pipeline Lead at Unity Technologies, where he leads a team working to deliver Unity’s highest fidelity rendering to the latest generation of mobile devices. Prior to that, he spent many years at a variety of GPU and computer systems companies working on low-level GPU software, from design and implementation of production drivers, to advance development of new GPU features. Jesse’s first SIGGRAPH conference was in 2001, demoing a multi-GPU composited rendering system. Since then, he has volunteered for the conference nearly every year since 2013: general submission jury in 2013-2015, 2017, & 2018, Mobile program chair 2014-2015, Real-Time Live! chair 2018. He also served on the ACM SIGGRAPH Practitioner Award Committee in 2018-2020.

For the past 20 years David has served in executive and senior engineering management roles responsible for multi-million dollar budgets at both startups and Fortune 500 companies. David got his start at SIGGRAPH as an early employee of Truevision – the company that created the world’s first 16-million color videographics frame buffer. David has served the SIGGRAPH North America conference as the A/V Chair in ‘92 & ‘94, the A/V Support Chair in ‘93, the Donations Chair in ‘95, the Computer Systems Chair in ‘96, and the GraphicsNet Chair in ‘99, ‘06, ‘09, ‘10, ‘14, & ‘20. He has served the SIGGRAPH Asia conference as GraphicsNet Chair in ‘08, ‘09, & ‘10 and a member-at-large on the SACAG from ‘15 – present. David has a BSIDE (CS & EE) from Purdue University. As a way of giving back, he teaches C, C++, and microcontroller programming in the evenings at Ivy Tech Community College.

In his spare time, he enjoys IndyCar racing and talking on amateur radio satellites with his home-built equipment. He combined those hobbies by becoming the President of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway amateur radio club. He’s also the President of two other amateur radio clubs with several hundred members.

Brad A Lawrence is the Imagery Engineering Lead at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. He began his career in the Navy and went on to various Engineering duties for ITT and Texas Instruments before joining the Space Shuttle team in 1985. At the end of the Space Shuttle program Brad managed the Image Analysis Facility, Motion Capture Studio and Advanced Visualization Studio. Presently he leads the team assigned to design, install and implement the next generation camera systems supporting Commercial Launch providers and NASA’s next generation launch system.

Brad began his SIGGRAPH experience with the SIG TV program in 1997 and held the SIG TV Chair position supporting the 2001 Conference. He then went on to Chair the Orlando Chapter for four years and later performed the Chapter’s Treasurer duties for another seven years. He has been a member of the Professional Chapters committee as the Treasurer since 2007. In 2013 he accepted the position as the EC Media Chair. He currently serves as the EC Treasurer-elect.

Adam Bargteil is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He completed his Ph.D. in computer science at the University of California at Berkeley, where he worked in the Berkeley Computer Animation & Modeling group. He then spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow in the Graphics Lab at Carnegie Mellon University. Before returning home to Maryland, he was an assistant professor in the School of Computing at the University of Utah. His primary research interests are in computer graphics and animation, especially physics-based animation. He is also interested in scientific computing, numerical methods, computational physics and computational geometry.

Adam has attended every SIGGRAPH conference since Los Angeles in 2001. He helped to initiate the “special session on whiskey fluids” at SIGGRAPH 2006 and has maintained that tradition annually. Adam served on the SIGGRAPH technical papers committee in 2008, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2016, and 2017 and the SIGGRAPH Asia committee in 2010, 2012, and 2015. He served on the SIGGRAPH general jury in 2010 and 2011. He was an associate editor for ACM Transactions on Graphics from 2011-2018. He was poster’s chair for the ACM SIGGRAPH/Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation in 2010 and was papers co-chair in 2011. He was conference co-chair for i3D 2017 and papers co-chair in 2018. He routinely serves as a program committee member for SCA, MiG, and i3D. Adam is currently a director on the executive committee. He currently leads EC’s strategy team for New Communities and New Frontiers with the goal of growing the SIGGRAPH community by bringing in emerging communities and engaging with established nearby communities.

Masa Inakage is the founding Dean and Professor of Keio University Graduate School of Media Design, known as Keio Media Design or KMD. He has been active as a media artist/ designer, creative director, and producer, as well as strategist. He leads and advises various academic and professional projects and organizations that illustrate near-future society and business based on Dream Driven Design method.

Masa has been involved with SIGGRAPH since 1984. As an EC member in the past, he was involved in the expansion of the SIGGRAPH community: SIGGRAPH Asia to connect Pacific Asia, and Digital Arts Committee to connect artists. Masa is interested in envisioning a desirable future through SIGGRAPH community.

Adam Finkelstein is a professor of computer science at Princeton University, where he has taught since 1997. His research interests focus on creating tools that help artists express themselves in the digital medium, including photo and video manipulation and stylized rendering. With others at Princeton, Adam founded and organizes the Art of Science Exhibition. He has received a number of awards including the NSF CAREER Award and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and he is a Fellow of the ACM. Adam was a graduate student at the University of Washington in Seattle, drank a lot of coffee, and eventually received a Ph.D. in 1996. In the late 1980’s, he was a software engineer at Tibco in Palo Alto, where he developed software for the financial industry and windsurfed in the San Francisco Bay. Adam was an undergraduate student at Swarthmore College (class of 1987) where he studied, occasionally, physics and computer science.

Adam has attended attended the ACM SIGGRAPH conference every year since 1993. Before joining the Executive Committee in 2019, Adam has served ACM SIGGRAPH in a variety of roles, including various program committees and advisory groups, Sketches and Posters Co-Chair (2007), Research Director (2008), and Technical Papers Chair (2014). You may recognize his voice from any of a number of video trailers for the Technical Papers Program.

Mona Kasra is a new media artist, interdisciplinary scholar, and Associate Professor of Digital Media Design at the University of Virginia. Her research focus involves exploring the confluence of media technologies, art, and culture; reflecting on the impact of emerging media on personal, political, and creative expression; and experimenting with the affordances of such media for artistic and performative practices. As a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at UVA, she’s currently researching representational, affective, and creative possibilities of immersive media for designing experimental experiences in Virtual Reality. She holds a Ph.D. in Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication from the University of Texas, Dallas.

Over the past two decades, Mona has served ACM SIGGRAPH in different capacities. She was Conference Chair in 2016, Art Gallery Chair in 2011, and served on the Conference Advisory Group (2014-18). She also served on the Art Gallery committee from 2008-2013 and established and chaired the SIGGRAPH Art Advisory Group in 2018.  She was elected as a director at large on the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee in 2019.

Mona’s first SIGGRAPH Conference was in 2001.

Barbara Mones has worked at the University of Washington in Seattle since 1999 in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering where she is a Teaching Professor, Creative Director, Animation Research Labs (ARL) and Director of the Reality Lab Studio. She has also served on the faculty of the Center for Digital and Experimental Arts ( DXARTS) at UW. She directs a series of team based animation courses designed to convey hybrid academia/industry production methods that culminate in a single completed animated short film each year. Working in the animation industry, she designed and implemented training programs at PDI/DreamWorks and Industrial Light & Magic. She received an Erskine Fellowship from Canterbury University in New Zealand to work at the Human Interface Technology Lab (HITLab) on immersive technologies for applications in content development and storytelling. At UW, she leads interdisciplinary research and production teams in the areas of facial expressions for stylized animated characters, the design of XR curriculum, and the production of VR narrative experiences. For ten years, she was an Associate Professor and the Founding Director of the Visual Information Technologies MA/MFA Program, a course of study in multimedia, computer graphics, and animation at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Barbara worked for the White House and National Aeronautics and Space Administration on Al Gore’s GLOBE (Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment) Program, a project whose mission is to connect children from over the world through the internet to study satellite imagery and learn about the ecological impact of soil and water use. She holds a BFA from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design, and a post-graduate certificate in animation from Sheridan College.

Barbara’s first SIGGRAPH conference was in 1983 and since then she has participated in many conference and committee-related activities. Those activities include the Education Committee (2017-2021 and 1984-1999), Nominations Committee (2012-2017) Student Animation Competition (SPACE) Animation Coordinator/Editor, (1985 -1999), SIGGRAPH 97 Panels Chair, (1996-1998), Sequential Animation Project, Electronic Theater Committee (1991-1992), Special Projects Committee (1995-1997), Art Show Committee, (1985-1987) and Animation Sketches, (1995-1996). She has also chaired, coordinated and participated in many conference panel sessions and BOFS.

Mikki Rose is a Senior Fur Technical Director at Blue Sky Studios, with experience in grooming fur, hair, feathers, and environment assets as well as hair rigging and simulation for cloth, hair, and supplemental character assets. Her undergraduate studies at Middle Tennessee State University include Bachelor of Science Degrees in Computer Science, Mass Communication with a Digital Animation Concentration, and an Art minor. Her graduate studies culminated in a Master of Fine Arts in Digital Production Arts from Clemson University. Prior to Blue Sky Studios she worked in visual effects in the Los Angeles area, spending several years at both Rhythm & Hues Studios and Sony Pictures Imageworks.

Mikki’s volunteer SIGGRAPH career began in 2002 as a Student Volunteer and has continued on ever since, including chairing the Student Volunteer Program in 2012, the Computer Animation Festival in 2015, and Production Sessions in 2016, before being named Conference Chair for SIGGRAPH 2019. With SIGGRAPH 2019 in the books, she is continuing her volunteer efforts as the Conference Advisory Group Chair, which also makes her a member of the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee. She remains an active NYC ACM SIGGRAPH chapter member, as well as maintaining memberships in WIA, ASIFA, and the VES.

Hanspeter Pfister is the An Wang Professor of Computer Science at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and an affiliate faculty member of the Center for Brain Science. His research in visual computing lies at the intersection of computer graphics, visualization, and computer vision. Pfister has a Ph.D. in computer science from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and an MS in electrical engineering from ETH Zurich, Switzerland. Before joining Harvard, he worked for over a decade at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories. Pfister is the recipient of the 2010 IEEE Visualization Technical Achievement Award and was elected as an ACM Fellow in 2019.

ACM SIGGRAPH SERVICE

– ACM SIGGRAPH Academy, 2020
– ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee, 2020-
– Technical Papers Chair, ACM SIGGRAPH, 2012
– Chair, Sketches Program, ACM SIGGRAPH 2006
– Associate Editor, ACM Transactions on Graphics, 2009–2014
– Papers Co-Chair, ACM Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games, 2005
– Co-chair, ACM SIGGRAPH / Eurographics Graphics Hardware, 2001 / 2003
– Program Co-Chair, ACM SIGGRAPH / Eurographics Graphics Hardware, 1998 / 2000
– Papers Co-Chair, ACM SIGGRAPH / Eurographics Graphics Hardware, 1999
– ACM SIGGRAPH Papers Committee, 2001-2011
– ACM SIGGRAPH Asia Papers Committee, 2008, 2011

Coming soon

Jenna joined SmithBucklin in the fall of 2019 to support SIGGRAPH. Jenna’s primary responsibilities are in service to SIGGRAPH’s executive committee. She also contributes to the existing SIGGRAPH conference administration work.

Ken is an associate professor at the Tecnológico de Monterey at the Guadalajara campus teaching in the areas of software engineering and information security. Originally from Canada, Ken chose México and teaching at the Tec back in 1995. Ken spent many years as a volunteer with ACM SIGPLAN and the OOPSLA conference before joining ACM SIGGRAPH as a contractor in 2001 to help migrate their services from a Solaris server to Linux. Despite not being part of the graphics community, Ken enjoys meeting the amazing volunteers and attendees at every SIGGRAPH event that he attends. You can find Ken on Twitter at @ken_bauer

John F. Hughes is a Professor of Computer Science at Brown University.

Hughes’ research is in computer graphics, particularly those aspects of graphics involving substantial mathematics. He is perhaps best known as the co-author of many widely used textbooks in the field of computer graphics.

Hughes is an avid sailor, and for years maintained the FAQ for the Usenet rec.boats group.

Adele Newton has developed and managed a broad range of programs and strategic international partnerships in the university, technology and not-for-profit sectors across Canada, within North America and in Africa, Europe and China. Her career has focussed on connecting diverse partners from technology, science and the arts to work together on exciting and innovative projects. Her current projects include her work as Executive Director of CS-Can|Info-Can and University Relationship Manager for Profound Impact Corporation. Adele is a graduate of the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Waterloo.

Adele has served in a range of SIGGRAPH roles, including Registration Chair in 1984, Conference Co-Chair for SIGGRAPH 88, chair of the Site Selection Committee, member of the Executive Committee as Chair of the Conference Planning Committee (precursor to the CAG), chair of the SIGGRAPH 2019 Business Symposium and member of the SIGGRAPH 50^th Conference Anniversary Executive Committee.

Victoria Szabo is Associate Research Professor of Visual and Media Studies in the Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies at Duke University. She is the founding Director of Graduate Studies for the PhD in Computational Media, Arts & Cultures and also directs the Information Science + Studies Program, as well as the Duke Digital Humanities Initiative at the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute. Prior to moving to Duke in 2006, she was an Academic Technology Specialist and Manager at Stanford University. She received her PhD in English from the University of Rochester with a Certificate in Gender and Women’s Studies. Her research focuses on multimodal approaches to digital media authorship for scholarly and artistic contexts, with special interests in spatial and immersive media and interactive storytelling. She is currently PI on Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities Institutes sponsored by the Getty-Foundation and by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

At SIGGRAPH, Victoria organized the “Information Aesthetics Showcase” and the “XYZN Scale Art Galleries,” as well as has served as Art Papers Chair, and has served on numerous art-related juries and on-site committees. She is currently Chair of the ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Community.

Tony Baylis is the director of the Office of Strategic Diversity and Inclusion Programs at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). Tony is a senior manager who serves as a champion, ambassador, and advocate for diversity and inclusion at LLNL. He manages the Laboratory’s interactions and successful execution in building, partnering, and collaborating with governmental, educational, industrial, community, and multiple stakeholders to assist the laboratory in striving to build an inclusive workforce to meet LLNL’s national security mission. He represents the Laboratory on the topics of diversity and inclusion, STEM, outreach, workforce initiatives, and student programs.  Tony serves as an advisor, consultant, and champion to the Department of Energy, minority-serving institutions, diversity organizations and universities, and serves as a co-principal investigator, an advisory board member, and a board member for institutions and projects that promote the advancement of women and people of color in science and technology careers.

Tony has been involved with ACM SIGGRAPH since 1999. He is a longtime SIGGRAPH volunteer and contributor to the organization and it’s conferences. He has served on conference committees, as director and treasurer on the Executive Committee, as well as a member of the Conference Advisory Group. In 2018, he became the inaugural chair of the ACM SIGGRAPH’s (9k member organization) Diversity and Inclusion Committee. He aims to carry out the committee’s goal of creating a welcoming and nurturing community for everyone working in computer graphics and interactive techniques. Tony’s passion is advocating for access, equity, and opportunity for the underserved and underrepresented communities in science and technology. Tony is a member of SHRM, ACM and ACM SIGGRAPH.

Glenn Goldman is a Professor in the Hillier College of Architecture and Design at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) and was one of the people responsible for the creation of the School of Art + Design in 2008, serving as its Founding Director for almost thirteen years. For 26 years prior to that, he taught at the School of Architecture at NJIT. Glenn has received awards for teaching, research, and creative work. He is a registered architect in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York and a licensed professional planner in New Jersey. He’s worked as an architect and designer for a variety of firms including Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and Jung/Brannen Associates in Boston, and Moshe Safdie Architects in Jerusalem. Glenn received his BA from Columbia and M. Arch. from Harvard.

Glenn’s first SIGGRAPH was in 1988 and he has attended every conference since then, making his first presentation at the 1991 conference. He’s been a member of the Education Committee for more than ten years and is also an inaugural member of the Distinguished Educator Award Committee. He was the Education Liaison for SIGGRAPH 2013 and the Courses Chair in SIGGRAPH 2015. In addition to serving as a reviewer and a member of the unified jury on multiple occasions, Glenn organized and led the industry panel sessions for the Educators Forum for four years (2017-2020). He is also the academic advisor for the student chapter, NJIT SIGGRAPH.

Joaquim Jorge is a Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of Lisboa and head of the Graphics+Interaction Research Group. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His research focuses on virtual reality, multimodal interfaces, and their applications to medicine and engineering.

A long-time practitioner of Computer Graphics, he joined IEEE/CS in 1982 and first attended Eurographics in 1986. His first SIGGRAPH was in 1989, and he has served on SIGGRAPH International Resources, Education, and Specialized Conferences (Chair 2014-2020) Committees. He is currently Chair of the SIGGRAPH External Relations Committee.

Since January 2007, he has been Editor-in-Chief of the Computers & Graphics and since 2018 Graphics & Visual Computing Journals (Elsevier). He is Associate Editor of Springer Virtual Reality Journal. He has served on the Editorial Board of seven other venues, including Computer Graphics Forum (Blackwells) from 1999—2008 and Springer/Nature HCIS Book Series since 2020.

A Senior Member of IEEE, he was an executive of the ACM Europe Council 2015-2019, became ACM Distinguished Speaker in 2015, and ACM Distinguished Member in 2017. Since 2021 he has been a member of the IEEE CS Distinguished Visitor Program. In 2010 he became a Eurographics Fellow and received the IFIP Silver Core Award in 2014.

He has served as Conference or Scientific Program Co-Chair of 50+ Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques conferences worldwide. These include IEEE VR 2020, 2021 & 2022, ACM ISS 2020, ACM VRCAI 2019, Eurographics (1998 and 2016), Shape Modeling International 2018, EuroVis 2019, the International Conference on CAD and Computer Graphics (China) 2013-2021, and the Brazilian Conference on Graphics and Image Processing (SIBGRAPI) in 2018 and IFIP INTERACT 2011. He currently serves on the IEEE CS Awards Committee, IEEE Visualization and Graphics Technical Committee (vgTC), the Eurographics Education Committee, and the EG Workshops and Working Groups Board.

Scott Owen received his B.S. from Harvey Mudd College and Ph. D. from the University of Washington, both in Chemistry. After a fourteen year academic career in Chemistry he moved to the new Computer Science program at Georgia State University. He is currently a retired Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at GSU. His research interests were in Computer Graphics, Computer Graphics Education, and Computer Graphics in Education. He has been a long time ACM SIGGRAPH volunteer serving as Chair of the Education Committee, Director for Education, SIGGRAPH Conference Chair (1997), CAG Chair, President, Past President, Chair of the External Relations Committee, and Chair of the Nominations Committee. He received the SIGGRAPH Outstanding Service Award in 2018. He is currently Chair of the Governance Committee, a member of the Outstanding Service Award Committee, a member of the Nominations Committee, and the Nominations Committee representative to the SIGGRAPH Executive Committee.

Mary C. Whitton is research professor (retired) of computer science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  She co-led the Effective Virtual Environments research group that investigated what makes virtual reality experiences achieve their goals.  She and her students used knowledge of human perception to develop technologies and techniques that make virtual environments more effective for applications such as simulation, training, and rehabilitation.  Before joining UNC in 1994, she was a founder of two companies (Ikonas—1978; Trancept Systems—1987) that produced high-end user-programmable hardware and libraries of software for graphics, imaging, and visualization.  The companies’ products were widely adopted in research laboratories for applications including seismic exploration, 3D medical imaging, intelligence, computer animation, and scientific modeling and simulation. The Ikonas RDS-3000 is widely recognized as the precursor of today’s general purpose graphical programming units, GPUs.

Professor Whitton has held leadership roles in ACM SIGGRAPH including serving as President 1993-1995. She received the ACM SIGGRAPH Outstanding Service Award in 2013.  Whitton is a member of ACM SIGGRAPH, and is a senior member of ACM and life senior member of IEEE.  She serves on the ACM History Committee and the Steering Committee for the IEEE Virtual Reality Conference. Whitton earned a B.A. from Duke University (1970), and an M.S. in Guidance and Personnel Services (1974) and an M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering (1984) from North Carolina State University.

June Kim is a researcher-practitioner in Art and Design discipline who currently undertakes PhD candidature at UNSW Art & Design and a casual academic position at UNSW Art & Design and the University of Sydney. Her current research interest is exploring the self through making a series of non-representational work in the virtual environment. Her work and talks were shown and given in EPICentre, UNSW Open day, The Cube at QUT, Media Art Nexus at NTU, SIGGRAPH Asia 2017, ISEA 2016, SAS 2016, Web3D 2017 etc.

Beginning as a Student Volunteer and SV team leader, June moved to the International Resources Committee to serve as an International centre manager (2015, 2018) and a committee representing Australasia and Asia for five years. In SIGGRAPH conferences, June volunteered to serve as a member of VR/AR/MR Program Jury for SIGGRAPH 2018, SIGGRAPH Asia 2017 and 2018. She also served as a Juror and an Awards Chair for Emerging Technologies for SIGGRAPH Asia 2017 and 2018. June presented her course to introduce Processing for Artists & Designers at SIGGRAPH Asia 2017.

Her new role for ACM SIGGRAPH is an International Resources Chair and recently joined in to Diversity and Inclusion committee. For SIGGRAPH 2019, she is appointed to serve as a VR/AR program jury and an Art gallery co-chair for SIGGRAPH Asia 2019.

Jonali Bhattacharyya is the Department Lead for Digital Media Arts at San Jose City College, and the Founder & CEO at Bits Bytes & Pixels. She received her MFA in Animation & Visual Effects from Academy of Arts University in San Francisco and BSc in Zoology from Gauhati University, India.

Jonali started her career in the Game Industry in 2006 as an animator and shipped AAA Games including Iron Man, Golden Axe Beast Rider, Lair and Marvel Ultimate Alliance II. She is an award-winning educator, whose multifaceted academic career has spanned more than 15 years of teaching within animation, game design, graphic design and visual storytelling. At San Jose City College Jonali is currently building a new Digital Media Art Department, creating a guided learning platform for a new generation of students.

Hailing from a small town in Northeast India, with no exposure to computer graphics during her early education and few opportunities for higher education in the discipline, Jonali is passionate about teaching the youth of our community. In 2018 she founded her company, Bits Bytes & Pixels, which brings education in computer graphics to middle and high schoolers in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, and promotes creativity through early engagement with digital art. She is an avid advocate for diversity and education for women—promoting events and activities at the regional and national levels. She also serves as a Mentor and Board Member for Visual Equator, a nonprofit serving underprivileged students in her community.

Jonali started volunteering with SIGGRAPH as a student in 2005; since then, she has served on various SIGGRAPH conference committees including Computer Animation Festival Committee in 2017, Mobile Committee in 2017 and VR, AR & MR Committee in 2018. She has also served as General Submissions Juror in 2017, 2018 and 2020. She currently serves as the Lifelong Learning Committee Chair at ACM SIGGRAPH.

Thierry Frey has over 25 years of experience in software development in various fields: CADCAM, printing and publishing, 3D animation, augmented and virtual reality. Thierry is currently the head of operations and technology at Reel FX in Montreal, helping set up a new virtual production pipeline using real-time components to produce an animated TV series.

He has been a long-time volunteer in the computer graphics field, an active member of ACM SIGGRAPH, and a Board Member of Laval Virtual. Thierry received the ACM SIGGRAPH Outstanding Service Award in 2020 (see https://www.siggraph.org/2020-outstanding-service-award-thierry-frey).

Thierry holds a masters degree in image processing from Télécom ParisTech and a degree in computer graphics from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs.

Juan Miguel de Joya is a Project Officer responsible for digital strategy, research and assessment, and technical communications for AI for Good at the International Telecommunication Union, the United Nations agency for information and communications technologies. Prior to this role, he worked at Facebook and Oculus, Google, DigitalFish, Pixar Animation Studios, and Walt Disney Animation Studios, and was an undergraduate researcher in computer graphics and physics at the Visual Computing Lab at the University of California, Berkeley.

Juan attended his first SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia conferences in 2012, as a student volunteer and research contributor, respectively. He has since contributed to the conferences and organization in various volunteer capacities, including but not limited to being the SIGGRAPH 2014 Posters Chair, SIGGRAPH 2015-2016 Games Committee, SIGGRAPH 2016-2017 Mobile Committees, SIGGRAPH Asia 2016-2017 VR/AR Showcase Chair, on the General Submissions Unified Jury, and as part of the Digital Presence Strategy Group.

Stephen Spencer is a Graphics System Administrator in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering, at the University of Washington, in Seattle, Washington. He received his Bachelors in Computer and Information Sciences from the University of Florida in 1985, and his Masters degree in Computer Science from The Ohio State University in 1988. Following graduation, he was a staff member at OSU’s Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design until 2000, when he joined the support staff at the University of Washington. Stephen has been involved with SIGGRAPH publications since the early 90s, as a member of the Publications Committee. He became Chair of the Publications Committee in 1995, and continues in that position to this day. He is also a member of the ACM Publications Board, joining that group in 2014.

Justin Solomon is an associate professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.  He received BS (mathematics and computer science), MS (computer science), and PhD (computer science) degrees at Stanford University and completed a postdoc in the Princeton Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics.  At MIT, he leads the Geometric Data Processing group, which studies problems at the intersection of geometry, optimization, and applications.

Justin attended his first SIGGRAPH conference in 2006 and has attended nearly every conference since.  He has served on the SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia technical papers committees several times and founded the New England Symposium on Graphics.  He is currently the SIGGRAPH Research Career Development chair.

Paul Kry has been a professor of computer science at McGill University since 2008. His research focus is physically based computer animation, such as the simulation of deformation, wrinkles, contact, and friction, as well as control of physics based characters for balance, locomotion, grasping, and manipulation. Paul received a B.Math. in Computer Science with Electrical Engineering Electives (University of Waterloo, 1997), an M.Sc. in Computer Science (UBC, 2000), a Ph.D. in Computer Science (UBC, 2005), two post-doctoral fellowships (INRIA Rhône-Alpes, Montbonnot, France, 2006 and Université René Descartes, Paris, 2008). He has been an associate editor for Computer Graphics Forum, Computers and Graphics, and has served on numerous conference program committees. Paul is also the president of the Canadian Human Computer Communications Society, the organization which sponsors the annual Graphics Interface conference.

Paul has been attending SIGGRAPH since 1999. He co-chaired ACM SIGGRAPH/Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation in 2012 and 2020. He has volunteered with the general submissions jury and has served on the SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH ASIA technical papers committees. From 2016-2019 served as a director at large on the ACM SIGGRAPH executive committee.

Marisa (Ginger) Tontaveetong is a multidisciplinary award-winning Creative Director/ Animation Producer with a specialization in digital/animation production and the executive director of 501c(3) ASIFA-SOUTH International Animation Society-South. She has worked on animation production for feature films, advertisements, tv-series, explainer videos, and more in various mediums. With 12+ years of design background with an MFA in Animation from Savannah College of Art and Design (Magna Cum Laude) and B.Tech in Computer Graphics/ Multimedia ( Summa Cum Laude and a 3-year full scholarship) from Bangkok University in Thailand. As an Oscar long-listed animated shorts director, she holds an O1B Extraordinary Ability Visa. She is an independent animation producer and pipeline consultant for various studios and has worked on a diverse range of projects from theatrical feature films, tv series, commercials, to e-learning. She has also juried for various festivals including the Oscar-eligible animated category for the Atlanta Film Festival and served as a panelist for various organizations including PGA-Atlanta’s Women in production summit, Women in Film and Television-Atlanta, Dragoncon, etc. Starting out as a student volunteer at SIGGRAPH 2013 in Anaheim, she has also served as a team leader for multiple SIGGRAPH/ASIA, as an S3 Student service committee member, and Computer Animation Festival Producer for SIGGRAPH ASIA in 2017. With a passion for the synergy of tech automation in the creative field and a passion for improving the creative industry, she also serves as a strategic adviser to the board of directors on the nurturing community committee and the Digital Presence committee.

Thomas Funkhouser is a senior research scientist at Google and the David M. Siegel Professor of Computer Science, Emeritus, at Princeton University. He received a PhD in computer science from UC Berkeley in 1993 and was a member of the technical staff at Bell Labs until 1997.

His research focuses on 3D shape representation, retrieval, analysis,
reconstruction, and modeling. He was the Technical Papers Chair for
SIGGRAPH 2009 and recipient of the SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award and NSF Career Award. He is a member of the ACM SIGGRAPH Academy, an ACM Fellow, and a Sloan Fellow.

Alyn Rockwood has most recently served as Professor of Applied Mathematics and Associate Director of the Geometric Modeling and Scientific Visualization Research Center at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia (2009-2013). His early professional work included working on Evans & Sutherland flight simulators and as a research scientist at SGI (1987-1990) where he was part of the team that developed GL and OpenGL. Alyn has held other academic positions at both Arizona State University and the Colorado School of Mines. Alyn received his PhD in Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics from Cambridge University in Cambridge, England. Alyn is also the author of the hard-science fiction novel “How Noble in Reason” which examines the trials and tribulations of the inventor of a sentient computer, and addresses the ramifications of the growing presence and power of artificial intelligence in a human society.
Since his first SIGGRAPH paper in 1981 (on hardware texturing and antialiasing), Alyn has regularly contributed to both the SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia conferences over the decades, with accepted submissions to a wide variety of programs that include the Computer Animation Festival, the Art Show, Emerging Technologies, Papers, Courses, Sketches, and the Educators Program. As a longtime SIGGRAPH volunteer, Alyn has helped to shape the organization’s two major conferences. Having served in numerous positions across the highest levels of ACM SIGGRAPH and conference leadership, Alyn has provided mentorship and encouragement to hundreds of volunteers throughout his many years of service. He was the SIGGRAPH 2003 Conference Chair, served as ACM SIGGRAPH Vice President from 2006 to 2009, headed the steering committee that orchestrated the launch of the SIGGRAPH Asia conference in 2006, acted as SIGGRAPH Papers Chair in 1999, and the SIGGRAPH Asia Papers Chair in 2013. Alyn won the Outstanding Service Award in 2017.

Copper Giloth, after 35 years at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has recently become Professor Emerita. Over her career, she has been both a Professor of Art and the Director of Academic Computing for the University. Her art practice focuses on storytelling, digital drawing, and, most recently, VR and AR projects based on her research on the 17^th century garden labyrinth at Versailles. In her IT position, she managed technology support for faculty including the campus-wide learning management system.

Copper’s involvement with the SIGGRAPH organization and conferences began in 1978 working on the SIGGRAPH Video Review.  She chaired the 1982 and 1983 SIGGRAPH Art Exhibitions and organized the first series of SIGGRAPH traveling exhibitions held in France, Japan, and in the USA. Her work has been included in multiple SIGGRAPH venues. She chaired the 1992 Special Projects Committee, served on a number of  SIGGRAPH Art Exhibition and Electronic Theatre juries, and served on the Digital Arts Committee from 2009-2015. She received the SIGGRAPH Outstanding Service Award in 2000.

After obtaining a PhD in computer graphics in Grenoble, France, Mathieu Desbrun joined Caltech as a postdoctoral fellow in 1998. He joined the CS department at the University of Southern California as an Assistant Professor in January 2000, where he remained for four years in charge of the GRAIL lab. He then became an Associate Professor at Caltech in the CS department in 2003, where he started the Applied Geometry lab and was awarded the ACM SIGGRAPH New Researcher award. He took on administrative duties after he became a full professor, becoming the founding chair of the Computing + Mathematical Sciences department and the director of the Information Science and Technology initiative from 2009 to 2015. More recently, he received an International Chair from France’s Inria, has been the Technical Papers Chair for the ACM SIGGRAPH 2018 conference, spent a sabbatical year at ShanghaiTech in the School of Information Science and Technology, and was elected as ACM Fellow in 2020. He is now working at LIX in Saclay, France, as both a researcher at Inria Saclay, and a Professor at Ecole Polytechnique.

Hugues Hoppe is a principal scientist at Google. Previously, he was principal researcher and manager of the Computer Graphics Group at Microsoft Research. His main interests lie in the multiresolution representation, parameterization, and synthesis of geometry, images, and video.  He received the 2004 ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award for “pioneering work on surface reconstruction, progressive meshes, geometry texturing, and geometry images” and was inducted into the SIGGRAPH Academy in 2018.  He has published well-cited papers in ACM Transactions on Graphics.  Contributions at Microsoft include mesh simplification and optimization in DirectX, texture synthesis technology, motion recognition in Kinect Star Wars, seamless stitching of the terapixel sky in WorldWide Telescope, and video looping in the Microsoft Pix Camera app.  At Google, he developed compression and rendering technologies for telepresence in Project Starline.  He is an ACM and IEEE Fellow, served as editor-in-chief of ACM TOG, and was papers chair for SIGGRAPH 2011.

Mark Elendt is a Senior Mathematician at SideFX where he has spent over 25 years developing high-end computer graphics software.  He has received four Scientific and Technical Academy awards, including an Academy award of Merit for his work developing procedural modeling and animation techniques in Houdini.

In addition to serving on several ACM SIGGRAPH committees, Mark has also volunteered for several conference programs: he was General Submissions chair for 2010 and 2011, he ran the SIGGRAPH Dailies program for 2013 and 2014 and was Courses Chair for SIGGRAPH 2017.

Victoria Szabo is Associate Research Professor of Visual and Media Studies in the Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies at Duke University. She is the founding Director of Graduate Studies for the PhD in Computational Media, Arts & Cultures and also directs the Information Science + Studies Program, as well as the Duke Digital Humanities Initiative at the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute. Prior to moving to Duke in 2006, she was an Academic Technology Specialist and Manager at Stanford University. She received her PhD in English from the University of Rochester with a Certificate in Gender and Women’s Studies. Her research focuses on multimodal approaches to digital media authorship for scholarly and artistic contexts, with special interests in spatial and immersive media and interactive storytelling. She is currently PI on Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities Institutes sponsored by the Getty-Foundation and by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

At SIGGRAPH, Victoria organized the “Information Aesthetics Showcase” and the “XYZN Scale Art Galleries,” as well as has served as Art Papers Chair, and has served on numerous art-related juries and on-site committees. She is currently Chair of the ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Community.

Jason RM Smith is Director for Global Distributed Development at 2K Games, joining the company in 2018.  

After fourteen years in real-time animation for a number of iconic UK game studios, Argonaut Software, Bullfrog, Electronic Arts & Criterion Games, Jason moved to San Francisco in 2008 to lead game & film convergence at Lucasfilm, and directed real-time visual development at LucasArts for five years.

In 2013 Jason established the SoMa Play company in San Francisco, partnering with Ubisoft, Sony Computer Entertainment and James Cameron/ Lightstorm to design and deliver five interactive titles for mobile and console platforms, and has worked globally with real-time and VR studios in Serbia, London, San Francisco, China and Argentina.

Jason graduated in traditional animation and film from Bournemouth Film School (UK) and studied under Richard Williams (NYC).

Since 2009 Jason has held nine positions at SIGGRAPH including Director of Real-Time Live (2011 & 2012) and Director of the Computer Animation Festival (2013). Currently, as Chairman of the Computer Animation Festival Advisory Board Jason serves to guide long term strategy and initiatives for the CAF, including partnerships, awareness, accessibility and diversity.

Additionally, Jason is an advocate and speaker for the UK Board of Trade & Industry, has served as international juror for BAFTA and SICAF, and as a board-member at View Conference. Jason consults internationally on interactive development and holds patents in artificial intelligence & machine learning.

George Drettakis is a Senior Researcher at the French National Institute for Computer Science and Applied Mathematics (Inria). He has worked on many different topics in computer graphics, with an emphasis on rendering. He initially concentrated on lighting and shadow computation and subsequently worked on 3D audio, perceptually-driven algorithms, virtual reality and 3D interaction. In recent years he has worked on image-based rendering and relighting, textures, weathering and perception for graphics. He graduated from the Dept. of Computer Science in Crete, Greece, and obtained an M.Sc.and a Ph.D., (1994) at the Dept. of C.S. (Dynamic Graphics Project) at the University of Toronto, Canada, under the supervision of Eugene Fiume. He was an ERCIM postdoctoral fellow in Grenoble, Barelona and Bonn (94-95). He obtained a permament Inria researcher position in the iMAGIS group in Grenoble in 1995, and the degree of “Habilitation” at the University of Grenoble (1999). In 2000 he founded the REVES research group at INRIA Sophia-Antipolis, which he headed from 2002 until Dec. 2015. Since July 2016 he heads the follow-up group GRAPHDECO. He became a INRIA Senior Researcher 2003; and DR1 (full professor equivalent) in 2008. He received the Eurographics (EG) Outstanding Technical Contributions award in 2007 and is an EG fellow.

Drettakis was an associate editor for ACM Transactions on Graphics, technical papers chair of SIGGRAPH Asia 2010, associate editor and co-editor in chief of IEEE Trans. on Computer Graphics and Visualization (2011-2015), co-chair of the EG Symposium on Rendering (EGSR) in 1998, and co-chair of the International Program Committee for Eurographics 2002 and 2008. He leads the EG working group on Rendering and Steering committee of EGSR. He has served on numerous program committees  for SIGGRAPH/SIGGRAPH Asia, Eurographics, EGSR, High Performance Graphics, Pacific Graphics and Graphics Interface.

Ed has been a professional CGI artist for over 35 years. He has been attending SIGGRAPH since 1983, and he helped start both the Los Angeles and the New York local chapters. He organized and taught three full-day SIGGRAPH courses, and his work has been seen frequently in SIGGRAPH Electronic Theaters. He has appeared on a number of SIGGRAPH panels, and he served on the ET jury in 2006.

Ed spent twelve years as a Senior Technical Director and Sequence Supervisor for Industrial Light + Magic during the George Lucas era. His CGI effects work appeared in all three of the STAR WARS Prequels, and in the 2006 OSCAR-winner Pirates of the Caribbean II: Dead Man’s Chest.

He led the teams creating the Scarab beetle shots in The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, the Rock Monster shots in Galaxy Quest, and the Droid Factory and End Battle shots in Attack of the Clones. He contributed to such classics as Jumanji, Twister, The Perfect Storm, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Jurassic Park: The Lost World, Stargate, Deep Impact, Herbie Fully Loaded, 101 Dalmatians, Van Helsing, and many other seminal visual effects blockbusters from 1992 through 2006.

The most recognizable creation from Ed’s career is the iconic Columbia Pictures “Lady with a Torch” logo, which he helped create with visual effects masters Joel Hynek and Jeff Kleiser.

Ed has been teaching Maya software since 2010 at the Colorado Film School, the Art Institute of Colorado, and currently at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design. His expertise includes CGI modeling, lighting, and dynamic simulations.

In his spare time, Ed is producing a documentary about the artists behind some of the most famous CGI moments in movie history, called Wizards of Hollywood. His website is www.wizardsofhollywood.com

Ed is currently serving as Chair of the SIGGRAPH Pioneers Group through 2021.