News

Join us on Wednesday, 7 February 2024, at 8:00pm Eastern for the next in our series of year-round Zoom panels. Our panelists are all computer graphics pioneers currently involved with AI, and they will discuss where things are headed at the intersection of Generative AI and Computer Graphics.

Register in advance for this webinar.

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-Ed Kramer
Chair, SIGGRAPH Pioneers

PANELISTS

Dan B. Goldman
Dan Goldman (www.danbgoldman.com) received his Bachelors and Masters in computer science from Stanford University in 1995. While at Stanford, he began his career as a visual effects artist at ILM, and subsequently held various computer graphics production and software development roles there for 12 years, on and off. He received his PhD from the University of Washington in 2007, and then joined Adobe’s Creative Technologies Lab, where he created techniques for inpainting and reshuffling image contents, launching the Content-Aware Fill family of features in Adobe Photoshop. He joined Google in late 2015, co-founded the Project Starline telepresence effort, and led its computer vision R&D team, developing high-fidelity real-time 3D human capture and rendering technology for the future of communication. In late 2022 he began leading a new Google Labs project in generative media. Dan is a member of the Visual Effects Society, an ACM SIGGRAPH Pioneer, and an affiliate faculty member at the University of Washington. He presently publishes a newsletter every weekday on generative media, at danbgoldman.substack.com.

Rebecca Perry
Rebecca Perry is a long-time SIGGRAPH member whose interests include the history of CG. Rebecca holds a PhD in Science, Technology and Society from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She taught at the University of Virginia, worked with Epic Games’ Virtual Production Fellowship program, and she now heads training and development for Lux Machina Consulting. Rebecca is currently collaborating with MIT researchers on a study of generative AI chat programs.

Blake Schreurs
Blake Schreurs is an immersive technology specialist with the Information Technology Services Department at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL). Blake has both a B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science. Early in his career, Blake gained a significant amount of experience in software engineering and software systems architecture. For the last eleven years, Blake has used these skills to focus on applications of AR / VR / MR, human-computer interaction, robotics, gaming, modeling, simulation, and immersive visualization.

David Spoelstra
A SIGGRAPH volunteer for 32 years, David has served in executive and senior engineering management roles responsible for tens of million-dollar budgets at both startups and Fortune 500 companies. Previous to that he was a hardware/software design engineer at Tektronix and several startups. Currently he is ACM SIGGRAPH Treasurer and researches deepfake technology as it relates to ethics issues in generative AI. David hosts a bi-weekly meeting in the Indianapolis area with members from a wide variety of disciplines to discuss AI advancements in their respective fields.

William Joel (Moderator)
Chair, SIGGRAPH 2024 Education Committee
Retired – Director, Center for Graphics Research
Western Connecticut State University

Ed Kramer (Host)
Chair, SIGGRAPH Pioneers (2019 – 2024)
Retired – Associate Professor, Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design
Sequence Supervisor, Industrial Light + Magic (1994 – 2006)

Our long-time SIGGRAPH colleague Bill Buxton was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in December 2023. This is a hugely prestigious Canadian honor recognizing individuals of outstanding achievement, dedication to the community, service to the nation, and who have enriched the lives of others and made a difference.

William A.S. (Bill) Buxton is a world-renowned Canadian computing pioneer and expert on design. Through his more than 40 years of professional activity, he has advanced the field of human computer interaction (HCI), a research discipline that he has been a leading innovator and researcher in since its early days in the 1970s. He is a thought leader in design principles in general, and specifically in the design of user experiences for computing products, software, and systems. Through his research, innovations, and extensive writings, he has generated considerable international recognition for Canadian computer science while establishing himself as one of the foremost experts globally in HCI and design

Bill Buxton’s contributions to advancing the field of computer interaction formally began with his early years pioneering interfaces to electronic musical instruments during graduate work at the University of Toronto, after foundational undergraduate studies in music composition at Queen’s University at Kingston. He then continued to innovate in the general area of user interfaces during work at the famous Xerox PARC facility, Apple, and later as Chief Scientist and CTO of Canadian company Alias | Wavefront, and at Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI).  Bill’s work with colleagues includes many patented innovations in gesture-based interfaces. He has done extensive research and innovation in touchscreen UI’s, multi-touch interfaces, hybrid touchscreen-keyboard interfaces, as well as in the use of semi-transparency in user interfaces. In recent years, Bill has been an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto while also being a Principal Researcher at Microsoft.

Bill has long been an advocate for, and leading teacher of, user-centric design principles and methods. His book Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design, published in 2007, has become one of the most popular and recommended reference books among modern students and practitioners of product design, especially user interface design. Bill maintains an extensive library of design textbooks with an index that is accessible online, as a service to the design community. He also keeps a remarkable personal historic collection of user interface hardware devices, including an early wooden model of a computer mouse and other historically significant UI devices. He is a highly sought-after public speaker and frequent conference keynote speaker on design and user interface topics.

Recognition of Bill’s work includes multiple honorary doctorates (Toronto, Eindhoven, Queen’s universities), and a long list of awards. In 2011 he became the first recipient of a Canadian Digital Media Pioneer Award. In 2010, he was named one of the world’s 27 most influential designers by Business Week. In 2008, he became the 10th recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from ACM SIGCHI.

There is a wealth of information available about him online and in research databases, including some of Bill’s many invited lectures and presentations, as a simple online search on “Bill Buxton” will demonstrate. His personal website billbuxton.com/ contains extensive additional details about his life, work, awards, and personal interests. Bill Buxton’s work throughout his extraordinary career in the study of human-computer interaction and design has brought prominence to Canadian computing research and Canadian technology, and he has represented Canada well on the global stage.