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Peter Schröder
interviewed 27
July 2003 by Wendy Ju
Peter Schröder
is Professor of Computer Science and Applied and Computational
Mathematics at the California
Institute
of Technology. Prof. Schröder is a world
expert in the area of wavelet based methods for computer
graphics. He is the recipient of this years Computer Graphics
Achievement Award for his outstanding
work in multiresolution methods in geometric modeling using
wavelets.
|
| What first drew you to computer
graphics? |
Watching the movie Tron. This was in '82-'83
or so-- I was totally fascinated by the movie and I wanted
to learn more about
it. I went to my first SIGGRAPH in 1984-- somehow I found out
that this was the right place to go. I registered and went
on my own volition. |
| Do you have any favorite computer graphics
mentors? |
My advisor, Pat Hanrahan, is
the obvious person to mention; he also won a SIGGRAPH prize
this year.
I had applied to graduate school in various places. Princeton
was where Pat was at the time. I had heard of him, and and
met him at conferences before. I pegged him as one of the
people in the field who had very strongly and consistently
contributed to the field, so I was excited to go to the school
he was at.
Wolfgang Kruger was a role
model and early supporter for me when I was at the Media
Lab. 1986 was when
I first met him. |
| What was the first time you
contributed to SIGGRAPH? |
My first paper was in 1993. I had taught
in courses before that, but the paper was on the form factor
between two polygons. It solved a problem first proposed
in 1760 by Lambert-- the namesake of Lambertian
shading.
|
| What year/city was your first
SIGGRAPH? Which was most intense? Why? |
1984 was my first SIGGRAPH, and it was
in Minneapolis.
|
| What contributions to SIGGRAPH
are you most proud of? |
I don't have a good answer for that. I don't
want to single out any one thing. That's not how it works.
These are contributions made over years; you keep the stream
going and that's how you sustain impact in the community. I
really feel that it is the sequence, the body of work, and
not one single thing that is important. |
| What's your favorite thing
at this year or last year's SIGGRAPH? |
Mostly seeing lots of friends again. In terms
of papers, SIGGRAPH is so big, so yes, I go to the talks, but
it's just content. The really wonderful thing is running into
people, catching up, and learning about new things that way. |
| What near/intermediate developments
in CG do you look forward to? |
Discete differential geometry. This is a body
of work with applications in surface processing, simulation,
cloth on digital characters, for instance. Rather than formulating
a problem in a continuous way and discretizing, you come up
with systematic and mathematical discrete laws to accomplish
the same tasks. I think there are some very nice and elegant
solutions in this realm. |
| Do
you think that the recogntion in the SIGGRAPH community is
important? |
I don't think it has an impact on the area
a particular person is working on. It is a recognition by a
community of peers to say that this person has consistently
influenced a lot of people, and has had impact on areas of
application.
In academia, you are measured by how many people build upon
your work. So, I certainly see the
honor of having my peers recognize my work as the foundation
for
much better work that follows.
It is important to mention that the work being recognized
is done in collaboration with students, colleagues and collaborators
around the world, a larger set of people without whom not of
this work would be possible. I think it is the work that
is recognized and that I am merely a representative of that
work. |
