Michael Kass

Last updated
Michael Kass
Kass academy award photo.jpg
Michael Kass receiving his Academy Award in 2006
Nationality American
Alma mater
Awards
Known for Active contour model
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions

Michael Kass is an American computer scientist best known for his work in computer graphics and computer vision. [1] He has won an Academy Award [2] and the SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award [3] and is an ACM Fellow.

Contents

Kass, David Baraff and Andrew Witkin shared an Academy Award for Scientific and Technical Achievement in 2005 for clothing animation, including his pioneering work on the clothing simulator [4] used by Pixar in the short Geri's Game , [5] [6] Best Animated Short Film, Academy Awards 1997. He contributed a variety of technologies to Pixar animated films, from A Bug's Life through Monsters University . [7]

In 2009, Kass was honored by ACM SIGGRAPH for "his extensive and significant contributions to computer graphics, ranging from image processing to animation to modeling, and in particular for his introduction of optimization techniques as a fundamental tool in graphics." [3] The award citation notes: "Michael is a graphics renaissance man: he's worked on animation, modeling, textures, image processing and even on graphics systems. In each area, he's made groundbreaking contributions." [8]

Google Scholar counts over 30K citations to his work, [9] including one of the top 20 most cited papers in computer science, [10] Snakes: Active Contour Models," authored with Andrew Witkin and Demetri Terzopoulos. The "Snakes" paper launched the Active contour model, a framework for delineating an object outline from a possibly noisy 2D image for applications like object tracking, shape recognition, segmentation, edge detection and stereo matching.

Kass developed the Hierarchical Z-Buffer with collaborators Ned Greene and Gavin Miller, a rendering technique that enables great increases in practical scene complexity compared to traditional Z-buffering. The algorithm can be found in all modern graphics processing units (GPU). [1]

Currently a distinguished engineer at NVIDIA, Kass is involved in a variety of projects related to augmented reality, virtual reality, and various types of content creation.  Prior to NVIDIA, he was a senior principal engineer at Intel, a distinguished fellow at Magic Leap, a senior research scientist at Pixar, and a principal engineer at Apple Computers. His early days in advanced technologies began at Schlumberger Artificial Intelligence Research Laboratory after earning his Ph.D. from Stanford. [1]

Kass has 28 issued U.S. patents [11] and was honored in 2018 by the New York Intellectual Property Law Association as Inventor of the Year.

Kass is also a champion juggler, [12] Argentine tango dancer, [13] and an accomplished ice dancer. [14]

Education

Kass received a B.A. summa cum laude in artificial intelligence (independent concentration) from Princeton University, an M.S. in computer science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. [7]

Career

Michael Kass has been a distinguished engineer at NVIDIA since 2017.  Prior to NVIDIA, he was a senior principal engineer in the New Technology Group at Intel, [15] distinguished fellow at Magic Leap, [16] a senior research scientist at Pixar Animation Studios, and a principal engineer with the Advanced Technology Group at Apple Computers. [7] He began working on computer graphics and computer vision at Schlumberger's Palo Alto Research Center following his Ph.D. [1]

Honors, awards and achievements

Computer science

Other

Notable publications

Pixar film credits

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rendering (computer graphics)</span> Process of generating an image from a model

Rendering or image synthesis is the process of generating a photorealistic or non-photorealistic image from a 2D or 3D model by means of a computer program. The resulting image is referred to as a rendering. Multiple models can be defined in a scene file containing objects in a strictly defined language or data structure. The scene file contains geometry, viewpoint, textures, lighting, and shading information describing the virtual scene. The data contained in the scene file is then passed to a rendering program to be processed and output to a digital image or raster graphics image file. The term "rendering" is analogous to the concept of an artist's impression of a scene. The term "rendering" is also used to describe the process of calculating effects in a video editing program to produce the final video output.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SIGGRAPH</span> Conference on computer graphics

SIGGRAPH is an annual conference centered around computer graphics organized by ACM, starting in 1974. The main conference is held in North America; SIGGRAPH Asia, a second conference held annually, has been held since 2008 in countries throughout Asia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edwin Catmull</span> Computer scientist and co-founder of Pixar (born 1945)

Edwin Earl Catmull is an American computer scientist and animator who served as the co-founder of Pixar and the President of Walt Disney Animation Studios. He has been honored for his contributions to 3D computer graphics, including the 2019 ACM Turing Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ACM SIGGRAPH</span> ACMs Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics

ACM SIGGRAPH is the international Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques based in New York. It was founded in 1969 by Andy van Dam.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lance Williams (graphics researcher)</span> American graphics researcher

Lance J. Williams was a prominent graphics researcher who made major contributions to texture map prefiltering, shadow rendering algorithms, facial animation, and antialiasing techniques. Williams was one of the first people to recognize the potential of computer graphics to transform film and video making.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catmull–Clark subdivision surface</span> Technique in 3D computer graphics

The Catmull–Clark algorithm is a technique used in 3D computer graphics to create curved surfaces by using subdivision surface modeling. It was devised by Edwin Catmull and Jim Clark in 1978 as a generalization of bi-cubic uniform B-spline surfaces to arbitrary topology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Non-photorealistic rendering</span> Style of rendering

Non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) is an area of computer graphics that focuses on enabling a wide variety of expressive styles for digital art, in contrast to traditional computer graphics, which focuses on photorealism. NPR is inspired by other artistic modes such as painting, drawing, technical illustration, and animated cartoons. NPR has appeared in movies and video games in the form of cel-shaded animation as well as in scientific visualization, architectural illustration and experimental animation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Loren Carpenter</span> American computer graphics researcher

Loren C. Carpenter is a computer graphics researcher and developer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alvy Ray Smith</span> American filmmaker, Pixar co-founder

Alvy Ray Smith III is an American computer scientist who co-founded Lucasfilm's Computer Division and Pixar, participating in the 1980s and 1990s expansion of computer animation into feature film.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marc Levoy</span>

Marc Levoy is a computer graphics researcher and Professor Emeritus of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, a vice president and Fellow at Adobe Inc., and a Distinguished Engineer at Google. He is noted for pioneering work in volume rendering, light fields, and computational photography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pat Hanrahan</span> American computer graphics researcher

Patrick M. Hanrahan is an American computer graphics researcher, the Canon USA Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering in the Computer Graphics Laboratory at Stanford University. His research focuses on rendering algorithms, graphics processing units, as well as scientific illustration and visualization. He has received numerous awards, including the 2019 Turing Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">3D reconstruction</span> Process of capturing the shape and appearance of real objects

In computer vision and computer graphics, 3D reconstruction is the process of capturing the shape and appearance of real objects. This process can be accomplished either by active or passive methods. If the model is allowed to change its shape in time, this is referred to as non-rigid or spatio-temporal reconstruction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Computer graphics (computer science)</span> Sub-field of computer science

Computer graphics is a sub-field of computer science which studies methods for digitally synthesizing and manipulating visual content. Although the term often refers to the study of three-dimensional computer graphics, it also encompasses two-dimensional graphics and image processing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrew Witkin</span> American computer scientist (1952–2010)

Andrew Paul Witkin was an American computer scientist who made major contributions in computer vision and computer graphics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Markus Gross</span>

Markus Gross is a Professor of Computer science at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich (ETH), head of its Computer Graphics Laboratory, and the director of Disney Research, Zurich. His research interests include physically based modeling, computer animation, immersive displays, and video technology. He has published more than 430 scientific papers on algorithms and methods in the field of computer graphics and computer vision, and holds more than 30 patents. He has graduated more than 60 Ph.D. students.

John Turner Whitted is an electrical engineer and computer scientist who introduced recursive ray tracing to the computer graphics community with his 1979 paper "An improved illumination model for shaded display". His algorithm proved to be a practical method of simulating global illumination, inspired many variations, and is in wide use today. Simple recursive implementations of ray tracing are still occasionally referred to as Whitted-style ray tracing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Demetri Terzopoulos</span> American professor of computer science

Demetri Terzopoulos is a Greek-Canadian-American computer scientist and entrepreneur. He is currently a Distinguished Professor and Chancellor's Professor of Computer Science in the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he directs the UCLA Computer Graphics & Vision Laboratory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dimitris Metaxas</span> American computer scientist

Dimitris Metaxas is a distinguished professor and the chair of the Computer Science Department at Rutgers University, where he directs the Center for Computational Biomedicine Imaging and Modeling (CBIM).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dynamic Graphics Project</span> Research laboratory at the University of Toronto

The Dynamic Graphics Project is an interdisciplinary research laboratory at the University of Toronto devoted to projects involving Computer Graphics, Computer Vision, Human Computer Interaction, and Visualization. The lab began as the computer graphics research group of Computer Science Professor Leslie Mezei in 1967. Mezei invited Bill Buxton, a pioneer of human–computer interaction to join. In 1972, Ronald Baecker, another HCI pioneer joined dgp, establishing dgp as the first Canadian university group focused on computer graphics and human-computer interaction. According to csrankings.org, for the combined subfields of computer graphics, HCI, and visualization the dgp is the number one research institution in the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hanspeter Pfister</span> Swiss computer scientist

Hanspeter Pfister is a Swiss computer scientist. He 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 at Harvard University. His research in visual computing lies at the intersection of scientific visualization, information visualization, computer graphics, and computer vision and spans a wide range of topics, including biomedical image analysis and visualization, image and video analysis, and visual analytics in data science.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "A Talk with Michael Kass, ACM Fellow and Industry Innovator". ACM SIGGRAPH Blog. 2018-01-04. Retrieved 2018-07-27.
  2. "Pixar draws academy kudos". Variety . February 20, 2006.
  3. 1 2 3 "2009 CG Achievement Award: Michael Kass". ACM SIGGRAPH. 2015-01-28. Retrieved 2018-07-27.
  4. "Scientific and Technical Achievements to Be Honored with Academy Awards". TvTechnology. Retrieved 2018-07-31.
  5. "'Geri's Game' Turns 20: Director Jan Pinkava Reflects On The Game-Changing Pixar Short". Cartoon Brew. 2017-11-25. Retrieved 2018-08-11.
  6. "Subdivision Surfaces in Character Animation" (PDF). Pixar.
  7. 1 2 3 Kass, Michael. "Pixar - Michael Kass CV". Pixar.
  8. Unknown (2009-08-03). "Computer Graphics Achievement Award". Computer Graphics Achievement Award: Michael Kass. Siggraph '09. ACM. pp. 2:1. doi:10.1145/1667228.1667230. ISBN   9781450379373. S2CID   23688843.
  9. "Michael Kass - Google Scholar Citations". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 2018-07-28.
  10. Kass, Michael; Miller, Gavin (1990). "Rapid, Stable Fluid Dynamics for Computer Graphics". Computer Graphics. 24 (4): 49–57. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.89.1204 . doi:10.1145/97880.97884.
  11. "Kass 28 issued U.S. Patents at USPTO.org".
  12. 1 2 "Jugglers - Where Are They Now: Part 1 · IJA". www.juggle.org. 2015-07-12. Retrieved 2018-07-27.
  13. 1 2 "USA TANGO CHAMPIONS". ARGENTINE TANGO U.S.A. 2014-11-21. Retrieved 2018-07-27.
  14. "Graphics Research Group: Home Page". graphics.pixar.com. Retrieved 2018-07-28.
  15. "Workshop on Augmented and Mixed Reality: Speakers, Moderators and Panelists". scien.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2018-08-14.
  16. "Magic Leap Draws From the Bay Area to Assemble Its Brain Trust". IEEE Spectrum: Technology, Engineering, and Science News. Retrieved 2018-08-06.
  17. "2005 Academy Award Nominations & Winners". atogt.com. Retrieved 2018-08-06.
  18. "Scientific and Technical Achievements to Be Honored with Academy Awards". TvTechnology. Retrieved 2018-07-27.
  19. "Pixar draws academy kudos". Variety. 2006-02-21. Retrieved 2018-07-27.
  20. "About ACM Fellows". awards.acm.org. Retrieved 2018-07-27.
  21. "All Award Winners". awards.acm.org. Retrieved 2018-07-27.
  22. "Inventor of the Year - NYIPLA". NYIPLA. Retrieved 2018-07-28.
  23. "CiteSeerX — Statistics - Most Cited Articles in Computer Science" . Retrieved 2018-08-06.
  24. "Helmholtz Prize • IEEE Computer Society". www.computer.org. Archived from the original on 2018-06-26. Retrieved 2018-07-28.
  25. "1993 Prix Jury: COMPUTER ANIMATION". Prix Ars Electronica. Retrieved 2018-07-27.
  26. Thalmann, Nadia Magnenat; Thalmann, Daniel (2012-12-06). Creating and Animating the Virtual World. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN   9784431681861.
  27. "ICCV Best Paper Award (Marr Prize) • IEEE Computer Society". www.computer.org. Archived from the original on 2018-11-26. Retrieved 2018-07-27.
  28. "AAAI-87: Sixth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence". aaai.org. Retrieved 2018-07-27.
  29. "ARS Electronica ARCHIVE". 90.146.8.18. Retrieved 2018-07-27.
  30. "dblp: 5. AAAI 1986: Philadelphia, PA". dblp1.uni-trier.de. Retrieved 2018-07-27.
  31. "Andy Witkin's Gallery". www.cs.cmu.edu. Retrieved 2018-07-27.
  32. "Andy Witkin: From Computer Vision to Computer Graphics". www.computer.org. Retrieved 2018-07-27.
  33. "graphics.pixar.com/aux/kass/vitae.html". graphics.pixar.com. Retrieved 8 September 2021.
  34. "Back to School | Computer Graphics World" . Retrieved 2018-08-13.