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Holly Rushmeier
interviewed 29 July 2003 by Jessica Fernandes
Holly Rushmeier is
a researcher at IBM, and was the SIGGRAPH Papers chair in
1996. |
| What first
drew you to computer graphics? |
Interesting research opportunity. |
| Do you have
any favorite computer graphics mentors? |
I have been helped and encouraged by many
people in the graphics community, so its hard to single anyone
out. One person who has been a great example is Nelson Max.
Besides consistently making significant contributions over
many years, he
always takes an interest in other people's work -- asking
informed questions at talks, writing amazingly thorough and
balanced paper reviews. |
| What was the
first time you contributed to SIGGRAPH? |
1987 |
| What year/city
was your first SIGGRAPH? Which was most intense? Why? |
I went to the Exhibition for Seattle/1980,
because I worked down the street and the company I worked
at was in the market for a large format pen plotter at the
time. 1987/Anaheim was the first time I went to the full conference.
1996/New Orleans was the most intense since I was on the committee. |
| What contributions
to SIGGRAPH are you most proud of? |
Running the 1996 papers program -- it was a
lot harder than I expected, and at times I thought it might
be the first year without a papers program! |
| What's your
favorite thing at this year or last year's SIGGRAPH? |
My favorite thing is always meeting up with
people and hearing about what they have been doing for the past
year. |
| What
near/intermediate developments in CG do you look forward to? |
Making the tools for creating and using graphics
easier to use. We can make amazing images, but it is still much
too hard. Making graphics tools easier to use will open up applications
in more non-traditional areas.
|
Having
been Papers Chair in 1996, looking back, what would you say
has
been the most significant change to the Papers program, or the
submissions
now being presented? |
The biggest change has been the institution
of a revision cycle after preliminary acceptance. This
increases the quality of the papers that appear. It also allows
the SIGGRAPH proceedings to be published as a special issue
of Transactions on Graphics, an important factor for recognition
outside the graphics community. This has been made possible
in part by being able to rely on electronic communications (I
know this sounds archaic, but in 1996 people were still disturbed
about requiring authors to have email access to send an abstract!),
and by improvements in the production process. It also is only
possible with an intense effort by both the committee and paper
authors. I hope the community is able to keep up the quality
of the process in the future. |
