SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 Committee

Masa Inakage is a Dean and Professor in the Graduate School of Media Design, Keio University. He is a media artist, director, and producer, and his artworks and animation works have been shown at galleries and festivals around the world. His current research interests include digital cinema, embodied entertainment, media art, synesthesia, and ubiquitous entertainment design using smart gadgets and environment. He holds a PhD in media and governance.

Yuko Oda is an artist, and she teaches at the New York Institute of Technology. Her current research includes creating interactive explosions using 3D visualization techniques and illustrating them with pen and paper. Oda received her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design and BA from Duke University. She was a resident at the School of Visual Arts in 1999, and a resident at the Vermont Studio Center in 2008.

Her work was a finalist for the animation competition Artport: The World Affected By Global Warming, and her animation has been exhibited in numerous international art fairs including Art Supermarket (Stockholm), Art Basel Miami Beach, Bridge Art Fair (New York), and the Diva Art Fair (Paris). Her recent exhibitions include E-forms at the Beijing Today Art Museum, Shift: Remix at Gallery Aferro (New Jersey), Volume at 3RD WARD (New York), and Stranger than Fiction at Artist Network Gallery (New York).

Leo Hourvitz is a technical art director, speaker, manager, programmer, effects artist and system designer with a long background in computer graphics and related systems. In his current role as Vice President of Technology at Polygon Pictures Inc., a medium-sized CG studio in Tokyo, he manages the technical pipeline development team with a secondary focus on overseas business development.

Prior to that, he was a Technical Art Director with Maxis/Electronic Arts, where he helped build the art team and the pipeline for The Sims 2 and other Sims products. He previously worked at Pixar Animation Studios, where he was supervising technical director on the Oscar-winning animated short film "Geri's Game" as well as effects technical artist on several feature films, including "A Bug's Life" and "Toy Story 2". He holds a masters of science degree in visual studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Tony Apodaca is a supervising technical director at Pixar Animation Studios, where he has been involved in computer graphics software development and animation production for over 20 years. His film credits include several of Pixar's feature films ("Toy Story", "Monsters Inc.", "Finding Nemo", and "Cars") and many of Pixar's short films (for example, "Red's Dream", "knickknack", and the recently released "Presto".

For most of the 1990s, Tony was lead engineer and chief architect of RenderMan, Pixar's award-winning photorealistic image synthesis product. In 1993, he and several Pixar colleagues were presented an award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for RenderMan's contribution to the film industry. He has a masters degree in computer engineering from Rensellaer Polytechnic Institute.

Ayumi Miyai is Secretary General at the Research and Development Center of the Computer Graphic Arts Society in Tokyo, Japan. She started her career as a designer and animator of computer graphics at the Japan Computer Graphics Lab. She was one of the core organizers of the Computer Graphic Arts Society and has been engaged in developing educational and training programs for the computer graphics industry in Japan. She has served as General Manager of the Planning Division of the Computer Graphic Arts Society to develop teaching materials, certification tests, and student CG contests.

Currently, while continuing her work at the Computer Graphic Arts Society as Secretary General, she is pursuing a doctorate at the University of Tokyo and researching measurement methodologies for computer graphics production proficiency.

Lars Erik Holmquist works at the Swedish Institute of Computer Science in the area of mobile services and ubiquitous computing. His current projects include: Embodied Communicating Agents (ECAgents), an integrated project funded by the European Union, and Integrating Mobile Devices and Interactive Workspaces for Design Thinking (iDeas II), a collaboration between the Göteborg IT University and Stanford University

He has presented his work at several conferences including CHI, SIGGRAPH, UIST, HUC/UbiComp, and InfoVis. He was the general chair for UbiComp 2002, the premier event in Ubiquitous Computing, which saw 500 participants. And he was co-chair for interactivity and co-chair for alt.chi for CHI 2007.

Today he is the owner of MediaMachine LLC, a technology consulting company that performs hardware and software design, project management, and technology vision initiatives with a specialty in digital video. He has been involved with several video hardware startups and served on several boards including VESA.

In 1992, while working for Truevision, the first videographics company, he first served on the SIGGRAPH conference committee as Audio/Visual and Donations Chair. Since then, he has served as a conference committee chair nine different times including the GraphicsNet Chair for the inaugural SIGGRAPH Asia conference.

An avid auto racing photographer, he is in charge of turn three at the world-famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway for The Associated Press. His work has been published multiple times in newspapers worldwide, and in Sports Illustrated, and he was awarded the World Press Association Award for Sports Photography in 1982.

He is also a board member of the DVTS Consortium and an active member of the WIDE Project, Japan, and he has been working on constructing a "Global Studio" throughout the world to enable an internet based, real-time collaboration environment. He holds a PhD in media and governance.

Yoichi Matsuyama is a PhD candidate in computer science at the Graduate School of Fundamental Science and Engineering, Waseda University. He received his BA (2005) and ME (2008) from Waseda University. His research interest focuses on human-robot interaction, an interdisciplinary field that combines cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and industrial design. His current project is a robotic communication system for entertainment and elderly care applications. He was a Student Volunteer for SIGGRAPH 2005, Los Angeles.

Since 2000, Ken Anjyo has been worked at OLM Digital, Inc., where he heads the Research and Development Division responsible for creating visual effects and in-house software tools. He was technical director for the Pokemon movies - "Pocket Monsters Diamond & Pearl: Dialga vs. Palkia vs. Darkrai" (2007), "Pokemon Ranger and the Prince of the Sea-Manafi" (2006), "Mew and the Wave-Guiding Hero: Lucario" (2005) - and the TV series "Monkey Turn" (2004).

His research focuses on construction of mathematical and computationally tractable models. Most of his research work has been published as international journal papers or at major computer graphics conferences such as SIGGRAPH and Eurographics.

Nelson Max's research interests are in the areas of scientific visualization, computer animation, and realistic computer graphics rendering. In visualization, he works on molecular graphics and volume and flow visualization, particularly on irregular finite element meshes.

He has rendered realistic lighting effects in clouds, trees, and water waves. He has also produced numerous computer animations, shown at the annual SIGGRAPH conference and in Omnimax at the Fujitsu Pavilions at Expo '85 in Tsukuba and Expo '90 in Osaka.

SIGGRAPH Asia Conference Advisory Group

Chair
Thierry Frey

SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 Conference Chair
Lee Yong Tsui
Nanyang Technological University

SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 Conference Chair
Masa Inakage
Keio University

SIGGRAPH Asia 2010 Conference Chair
Ko Hyeong-Seok
Seoul National University

Executive Committee Representatives to the
SIGGRAPH Asia Conference Advisory Group
Leo Hourvitz
Polygon Pictures, Inc.

Kathryn Saunders
Kathryn Saunders Design Inc.

Chief Staff Executive
Daniel Schmidt
Koelnmesse Pte Ltd - Singapore