News

ACM SIGGRAPH is recruiting for a Chair for the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee. This chair will join the ranks of the standing committee chairs who assist the Executive Committee in nurturing and supporting the community of computer graphics researchers and practitioners. A listing of the current standing chairs and their roles can be found here: https://www.siggraph.org/about/acm-siggraph-committees

The ACM SIGGRAPH Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Committee Chair is the lead of the committee that works with committee members to set goals, objectives, and activities that strive to make the organization a more welcoming, diverse, and inclusive environment. The Committee collaborates with the ACM Executive Committee, Conference Committees, and organization members to help frame the committee work. The DEI committee will monitor and evaluate  activities concerning DEI issues as an ongoing effort; they will spearhead DEI efforts that assist in the chapter’s membership/leadership; they will create programs and best practices that serve the organization. The Committee will create, implement and optimize programs that support the success of and create a welcoming and inclusive environment for all. 

Activities of the committee may include:

• Lunches and other networking activities at both the main conferences and the specialized conferences
• Establishment of a year-round Mentoring Network with training for both mentors and mentees and a matchmaking process
• Assisting the volunteer organizers of SIGGRAPH by suggesting names of people qualified to serve as speakers for panels, members of program committees, and other roles that should represent the diverse community of SIGGRAPH.
• With EC financial support, administering travel grants and other mechanisms designed to support traditionally under-represented minorities in the field.
• Ensuring that conference events and the year-round activities of the organization are accessible 

This list of activities is not intended to be complete and we expect that the Chair and their committee will develop a much longer and more impactful set of activities over time.   We also recognize that no one individual can be expert in best practices in all of these forms of diversity and expect that the chair will rely heavily on their committee to supplement their own expertise.

Each fall, the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee should establish measurable goals relating to SIGGRAPH’s diversity initiatives and evaluate the progress over the previous year in achieving the stated objectives.   A budget must be submitted to the Executive Committee and January and a report of the activities and outcomes should be submitted in June.

The Chair can expect to spend 5 or more hours/week on the chair activities. 

For those interested in applying for this position, please contact Thierry Frey, Chair of the Nominations Committee. Provide a CV and vision statement (why you’re interested in being chair and what you hope to accomplish in this volunteer role). The Nominations Committee will review all the candidates, conduct interviews, and make recommendations to the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee in order to identify the next Chair.

The deadline for applying is April 30 but applications will be accepted until the position is filled and the term will begin on September 1. The term is three years, renewable once.

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.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.
-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.

SIGGRAPH regrets to announce the death of Vera Molnár on December 7, 2023.

SIGGRAPH recognized Molnár for her many pioneering computational art techniques engaging human sensitivity in the production of her abstract geometrical artworks with the 2022 ACM SIGGRAPH Distinguished Artists Award for Lifetime Achievement in Digital Art.

The Hungarian-French artist co-founded two groups that focused on the use of technology within the arts: the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel, a collaborative artists group in Paris that consisted of eleven opto-kinetic artists, and Art et Informatique, a group dedicated to computer art.

Molnár earned early programming language, including Basic, to make art. Her work has been featured in major international solo and group exhibitions and is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and the Centre Pompidou. In 2018 she received the AWARE Outstanding Merit Award from the French Ministry of Culture acknowledging leading female figures in the world of culture.

A set of Molnár’s computer drawings from the 1970s was exhibited at the prestigious 2022 Venice Biennale of Art, where, at 98, she was the oldest artist participating in the Biennale. She collaborated with Dr. Francesca Franco to create the ICÔNE 2020 glass works now also in an official Venice Biennale collateral exhibition.

The Outstanding Service Award is presented annually to recognize a career of outstanding service to ACM SIGGRAPH by a volunteer. It recognizes an individual who has given extraordinary service to ACM SIGGRAPH, both in the trenches and in positions of more responsibility or visibility, over a significant period of time. The award includes a lifetime Pioneers membership in ACM SIGGRAPH. For more information about the Award and the list of past winners, go to https://www.siggraph.org/awards/outstanding-service-award/. If you are interested in submitting a candidate please contact the Chair of the Outstanding Service Award Committee, Scott Owen, at owen@siggraph.org. The deadline is January 31, 2024.