Member Profile: Takeo Igarashi
1. What do you do, and how long have you been doing it?
I am a full professor at the University of Tokyo. I have been working here since 2002. So long already!
2. What was your first job?
Internship may not be a real job, but I would say that my first job was internship at at Xerox PARC in 1997. I learned a lot from the experience, which led me to have research as my life-long occupation.
3. Where did you complete your formal education?
I received Ph.D in information engineering from the University of Tokyo in 2000.
4. How did you first get involved with ACM SIGGRAPH?
My first attendance was SIGGRAPH 1998. I was busy implementing Teddy in that summer and implemented “warping” feature during the conference at the hotel.
5. What is your favorite memory of a SIGGRAPH conference?
My paper, Teddy, published in SIGGRAPH 1999 was well received at that conference and it was the most memorable experience.
6. Describe a project that you would like to share with the ACM SIGGRAPH community.
I am now serving as SIGGRAPH Asia 2024 conference chair. It is a great pleasure to host my friends in SIGGRAPH community in Tokyo.
7. If you could have dinner with one living or non-living person, who would it be and why?
It is always fun to have dinner and chat with researchers around the world working in the same field.
8. What is something most people don’t know about you?
I started drawing Teddy bears when I was at elementary school. I was initially drawing pandas a lot, but I found that drawing circles around eyes are tedious and decided to draw bears instead.
9. From which single individual have you learned the most in your life? What did they teach you?
It was a memorable experience to work with Randy Pausch at CMU. I learned from him to pursue what you believe is interesting and important without constrained by current systems and practices.
10. Is there someone in particular who has influenced your decision to work with ACM SIGGRAPH?
I originally worked in Human-computer interaction field. Then, Bob Zeleznik’s SKETCH paper in 1996 suggested that SIGGRAPH might be the place to go.
11. What can you point to in your career as your proudest moment?
It is fulfilling to see technologies I have developed being used by many
people in the real world.