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Diversity and Inclusion: The key to a successful future, or the next step toward imminent failure.

Diversity and inclusion have become buzzwords, not only in North America but around the world. But what do they actually mean? Why does diversity and inclusion (D&I) matter when it comes to the world of computer graphics and interactive techniques?

This information session will be held August 12, 2018, in the Vancouver Convention Center, East, Room 11.  The Summit will examine the concepts of diversity and inclusion to include interactive presentations and panels. We will examine what D&I really means and we will examine the concept of unconscious bias and how our brains work. We will help attendees understand how a focus on diversity and inclusion in their workplaces can lead to more productive and engaged employees.

The Summit is open to all but is limited to 120 participants and seating will be first come, first served.

 ACM SIGGRAPH Diversity and Inclusion Summit Agenda

• 9:00am- 9:10am: Welcome – Jessica Hodgins, ACM SIGGRAPH President
• 9:10am- 9:20am: Summit Agenda and Goals, Tony Baylis, ACM SIGGRAPH Diversity and Inclusion Committee Chair 
• 9:20am- 10:45am: Panel – Diversity and Inclusion Experiences – Mashhuda Glencross, Kevin Griffin, Natalie Rountree, Daniel Pillis, Aruquia Peixoto, and Skawennati. Moderator: Tony Baylis
• 10:45am- 11:00am: Break
• 11am- 12:30pm: Michael Bach, CEO, Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion
• 12:30pm- 1:00pm: Lunch 
• 1:00 pm- 2:15pm: Panel – Breaking Bias and Barriers – Panelists: TBD – Moderator: Zoe Cranley 
• 2:15pm- 2:30pm: Break
• 2:30pm- 4:00pm: Dr. Caroline Simard, Managing Director, The Clayman Institute for Gender Research- Presentation: See Bias, Block Bias
• 4:00pm- 4:15pm: Town Hall (Input from audience on what ACM SIGGRAPH D&I committee should focus on)
• 4:15pm- 4:30pm:  Mikki Rose, ACM SIGGRAPH 2019 Conference Chair – 2019 Conference D&I Plans
   

Panel: Diversity and Inclusion Experiences

“What do we mean by diversity? Often diversity refers to the protected classes (such as gender, race, religion, nationality, sexuality and disability) legislatively governed by law for workplace discriminatory practices or behaviors. Is that the only meaning of diversity? What does inclusion mean and when does it happen?

Many organizations say they are keen to support diversity, but organizations and individuals allow unconscious and implicit biases to influence decision making when we choose candidates for jobs, teams, leadership positions, promotions and so on. In this panel, we will ask individuals from traditionally underrepresented communities in academia and the tech sector these questions. Our panelists will speak about their own personal experiences of how being from an underrepresented group has affected them and their passion to strive for inclusion.”

Panelists and Speakers

Michael Bach, CCDP/AP

Michael Bach is nationally and internationally recognized as a thought leader and subject matter expert in the fields of diversity, inclusion and employment equity, bringing a vast knowledge of leading practices in a live setting to his work. He has deep experience in strategy development, stakeholder engagement, training and development, research, solution development and execution, employee engagement, data analytics, measurement and diversity scorecards, targeted recruiting strategies, marketing and communications, Employee Resource Groups, Diversity Councils, and diversity related legislation (Employment Equity Act, AODA, etc.) among other skills and experiences related to field of diversity and inclusion.

Prior to taking on this role he was the National Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for KPMG in Canada, a role he created and held for the past 7 years. Additionally, Michael completed a 2½ year secondment as the former Deputy Chief Diversity Officer for KPMG International.

At KPMG Michael was responsible for the overarching diversity strategy for the firm’s operations in Canada, including the development and implementation of all diversity related programs and initiatives. During his tenure, KPMG received several prestigious diversity related awards – including being named one of Canada’s Top Employers for Diversity and one of Canada’s Best Employers for New Canadians. KPMG is the only organization that has won both awards in all five years they have been awarded.

In addition, the firm has been named one of Canada’s Top Family Friendly Employers (2003, 2004, 2005, 2009, 2010 and 2013) and the Top 40 Places Gen Y Wants to Work (2009). Regionally, they have received the Best Workplaces for Diversity as part of the Alberta’s Best Workplaces Award (2010), the Recognizing Immigrant Success in Edmonton Award (2010), and the SFU Nancy McKinstry Leadership in Diversity Award (2010).

Over the course of his career, Michael has received repeated recognition for his work, including being named as one of the Women of Influence’s 2012 Canadian Diversity Champions. In 2011 he was honored as the Diversity Champion with the Catalyst Canada Honours Human Resources/Diversity Leader award. He also received the Women of Influence’s 2011 Canadian Diversity Champions, the 2011 Inspire Award as LGBTQ Person of the Year and the 2011 Out on Bay Street Leaders to be Proud of LGBT Advocate Workplace Award.

In 2010 Michael was honored by the Toronto Immigrant Employment Council with the 2010 IS Award Canadian HR Reporter Individual Achievement Award. Additionally, in 2009, Michael was honored as one of the winners of the KPMG CEO Community Excellent Award for his contribution to community.

Michael has a Post Graduate Certificate in Diversity Management from Cornell University and holds the Cornell Certified Diversity Professional, Advanced Practitioner (CCDP/AP) designation.

Tony Baylis

Tony Baylis is the senior management advocate for diversity and inclusion for the Laboratory. Tony is responsible for overseeing the laboratory’s interactions and successful execution in building, partnering and collaborating with governmental, educational, industrial, community interests and other stakeholders. LLNL has had a long history in working with Minority Serving Institutions, specifically relationships with American Indian Institutions, Hispanic Institutions, and Historically Black College and Universities. He represents the Laboratory on the subjects of Diversity and Inclusion, STEM Outreach Efforts, and Student Programs. At LLNL he encourages and mentors the Lab’s Employee Resource Groups and students that reflect the lab’s diverse staff population.

Tony's career represents 30 years of administrative, project, program, technical, and organizational management. He has worked in a scientific and technical environment for over 23 years and has worked as a consultant in industry as well. Tony has extensive experience networking with a broad range of academic, industry, government and non-profit organizations that has educated him and helped him in his career. He is a DOE Minorities in Energy Champion for the department and also serves on a number of conference program committees and advisory boards that promote STEM and diversity in science and technical careers.

Kate Bergel

Kate has been working in VFX/animation for 15 years. After obtaining a BSc in Computer Science/Maths from the University of York, she spent a year as a junior systems administrator at MPC before returning to academia to study for an MSc in Vision, Imaging and Virtual Environments (VIVE) at UCL, which helped her transition to development roles at MPC, Framestore, Pixar and even (briefly) Electronic Arts. She is currently a senior developer at Framestore, working on a variety of applications; her projects there to date have included simulation of both rigid and deformable objects, as well as crowd editing, grooming and layout tools.

Clara Chan

Clara Chan is a CG Supervisor at Sony Pictures Imageworks. She has contributed to HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA 3, THE EMOJI MOVIE, and STORKS.
Previously Chan served as a senior technical director at Imageworks. Her credits include: HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA 2, THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2, OZ: THE GREAT AND POWERFUL, THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA, CATS & DOGS 2, G-FORCE, BEOWULF, MONSTER HOUSE, POLAR EXPRESS, EARLY BLOOMER, and STUART LITTLE 2. Earlier in her career, Chan worked as a software engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab.

Chan earned a B.S. in computer science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a master’s degree in visualization sciences from Texas A & M University.

Andrea Chlebak

Andrea Chlebak is a supervising colorist, who has worked in the film industry for 15 years. Andrea got her start as a stills photographer, then editor and compositor before seizing the opportunity to become a colorist in 2006. Since then, she has set her sights on a rapidly growing collection of feature, series and commercial projects, including Hollywood heavy hitters like ELYSIUM, CHAPPIE and THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE, animated features like Kahlil Gibran’s THE PROPHET and award-winning independent features, including MANDY and PROSPECT.

Mashhuda Glencross

Mashhuda Glencross career has spanned academia technical product management, independent consulting and working with start-ups. Her research focus is on creating effective virtual environments (VR/AR/XR) and has included 3D reconstruction, distributed VR, real time massive model rendering, visual perception, IoT, Visualisation and haptics. Her work has been published in high impact journals and conferences such as SIGGRAPH, TOG, TOCHI, IEEE TVCG, IEEE VR. She has also served on SIGGRAPH programme committees and reviewed for international conferences and journals. She is a current member of the ACM PACM steering committee and an associate editor for Computers and Graphics.

Kevin Griffin

Kevin Griffin is a Group Leader for the Weapons Information & Infrastructure Integration Group at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. Kevin is also a Software Engineer and Scientific Visualization Researcher for LLNL serving as one of the key developers for VisIt, a distributed, parallel visualization and graphical analysis tool for data defined on two- and three-dimensional meshes. He also serves as the technical lead for PyDV, a one-dimensional graphics and data analysis tool.

Kevin is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Davis with research interests in Scientific Visualization and High-Performance Computing. His current research involves visualizing smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulation datasets on high performance computing platforms. Kevin holds a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Tulsa and a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Delaware. Before joining LLNL, Kevin was a Technical Lead/Software Developer for the National Security Agency in Ft. Meade, Maryland.

Jessica Hodgins

Jessica K. Hodgins is an American roboticist and researcher who is a Professor at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute and School of Computer Science. She is also Research and Operations Lead at Facebook’s new FAIR lab in Pittsburgh. She was Vice President of Research at Disney Research and the Director of the Disney Research labs in Pittsburgh and Los Angeles.

A pioneer in the use of physical simulation and control as a means to produce character animation, Hodgins has been passionately involved in computer graphics for most of her career. She played an important role in developing library-based control, such as motion graphs, for both animated characters and for robotics. She also worked on how both animated characters and robots can move in expressive ways, an important ingredient both in entertainment and in human-robot interaction. She has explored ideas about how human bodies bulge, jiggle, and change their shape during motion.

Hodgins’ groundbreaking work linked robotics and graphics, playing a unique role in applying ideas from robotics to animation and vice versa. Her research has advanced the development of realistic computer animations and innovative techniques that are consistently pushing the boundaries in human-robot interaction and humanoid robotics.

Sarah Matthews

Sarah Matthews is an Effects Technical Director at Weta Digital. Her contributions to a film range from atmospheric particulates to environment motion, water and volumetric simulations, and large-scale destruction.

Sarah graduated from the Auckland University of Technology in 2009 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Communication Studies majoring in Digital Media. She went on to Huhu Studios where she led the rigging department, and developed and maintained the show pipeline.

Sarah joined Weta Digital in 2014 for the completion of Rise of the Planet of the Apes and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. Since then, she has contributed large-scale waterfalls for Avatar: Flight of Passage, destruction and animation-driven effects for Maze Runner: The Death Cure, foliage motion in War for the Planet of the Apes, ghost simulations for Spectral, and has tried her hand at lighting shots for Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip. She is currently working on Alita: Battle Angel.

Dr. Aruquia Peixoto

Dr. Aruquia Peixoto is an Assistant Professor at CEFET/RJ in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She have a B.S. in Mathematics from UFRJ (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), a M.S. in Engineering of Computing and Systems from COPPE/UFRJ and a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from PUC/RJ, all these institutions are in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and are some of the best universities in Brazil. She worked in the implementation of the State University of Roraima in the extreme north of Brazil, in 2006. She advised undergraduate students in scientific projects in UERJ (State University of Rio de Janeiro), where she win four prizes as co-advisor, working with Paulo Rogerio Sabini, two prizes in UERJ, one as best work of Mathematics, and other as one of three best work in the technological field, and she have two honorable mention in a national student’s projects presentations in the Jornadas de Inicação Científica organized by IMPA (National Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics). She is member of the ACM SIGGRAPH International Resources Committee since 2013, member of the SIGGRAPH Asia Symposium on Education Committee in 2016 and 2017, and co-organized the meetings Women in CG in SIGGRAPHand SIGGRAPH Asia Conferences, organized the meeting Girls in STEM in SIGGRAPH Asia in 2016 and 2017.  During the year 2016 to 2017 she was visiting faculty at University of Kansas. In the conference IEEE EDUCON irganized and was the moderator of the roundtable Women in Engineering: Issues and Perspectives in 2017 and in 2018 was panelist of the round table  Women in engineering: Addressing the gender gap, exploring trust and our unconscious bias and was the organizer and chair of the special session IDEE (Inclusion and Diversity in Engineering Education).

Daniel Gene Pillis

Artist and technologist Daniel Gene Pillis is a Research Assistant Professor in Immersive Environments at Virginia Tech’s Institute for Creativity, Arts and Technology. Their team pursues research at the intersection of queer theory, virtual reality, and embedded forms of consciousness in objects and narrative experiences. Diversity and technology, robotics archaeology, and methods for interacting with and understanding the phenomena of time, aging, and history are all current areas of research. Pillis was previously researcher and artist-in-residence at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University with Dr. Christopher Atkeson, where they focused on soft machines and inflatable robotics. They hold a Masters degree focusing on Virtual Reality and Immersive Environments from Carnegie Mellon University, where they worked with the father of computer graphics, Ivan E. Sutherland, as well as esteemed computer scientist Jessica Hodgins. Previously, Pillis received a Bachelors in Cognitive Science from Rutgers University, where they conducted research in the Decision Making Laboratory with Dr. Gretchen Chapman. Pillis has exhibited work at the Warhol Museum, (Pittsburgh, PA) the Leslie Lohman Museum of Queer Art, (NYC), Newark Penn Station, (Newark, NJ) and has performed at the Museum of Contemporary Art, (Cleveland, OH), Open Engagement International Conference (Pittsburgh PA) and the Theatre for the New City in the East Village (NYC), as well as numerous other galleries and internet venues.

Mikki Rose

I’m Mikki Rose, Senior Fur TD at Blue Sky Studios and admitted SIGGRAPH addict. I graduated from Middle Tennessee State University in 2005 with B.S. degrees in Computer Science and Mass Communication with a Digital Animation concentration, then went on to Clemson University and for an M.F.A. in Digital Production Arts. Early on in my education at MTSU I was introduced to SIGGRAPH via the Student Volunteer Program and have continued as a volunteer with the conference ever since. While working on my thesis I moved out to Los Angeles, CA to work as a Technical Animation TD at Rhythm and Hues Studios, followed by a similar role as Cloth and Hair TD at Sony Pictures Imageworks. Changes in the flow of work in the VFX industry prompted a move to New York to join the team at Blue Sky Studios, where I have happily been for the last four years. The adventure continues!

It was at MTSU that I first discovered SIGGRAPH and took part as a Student Volunteer in 2002. After 10 years and working in every role within the Student Volunteer Program, I fulfilled a goal I made during that first volunteer experience and chaired that same program in 2012. It was a truly fantastic experience that I am grateful to have had! Since then I have been honored to volunteer on several special projects, as Co-Chair of the Computer Animation Festival for SIGGRAPH 2015, Production Sessions Chair for SIGGRAPH 2016, and now as your SIGGRAPH 2019 Conference Chair.

Rachel Rose

Rachel Rose joined Industrial Light & Magic in 2007 as a Research & Development Engineer. In 2016, she was promoted to R&D Supervisor for Animation, Virtual Production, Digital Modeling and Creature Development and Simulation. In this role Rachel is responsible for driving both long-term and short-term technology that aids artists in the creation and animation of characters for feature films.

During her time at ILM, Rachel has worked on a wide variety of tools including: BlockParty 2, a visual, procedural rigging system for which she was awarded a Technical Achievement Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2018; VSet, a comprehensive virtual production tool package; Fez, ILM’s facial animation system; and Mobius, a tool for translating character setups and animation from Maya to ILM’s in-house proprietary software called Zeno. These tools have been used in many well-known films, including Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014), Noah(2014), Battleship (2012), The Avengers (2012), Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011), Rango (2011) and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008).

Prior to joining Industrial Light & Magic, Rachel received a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science and English from Grinnell College. Rachel continued her education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she received a Masters degree and Ph.D. in Computer Science. While in graduate school, Rachel spent two of her summers working for Rockstar Games. She currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, Justin, and her two young children.
 

Natalie Rountree

Hello, I am Natalie Rountree, and I graduated from Middle Tennessee State University in 2014 with a Bachelor's of Science with a focus in Digital Animation. After going to my first SIGGRAPH conference in 2014 as a student volunteer, I was hooked as soon as I picked up my SV T-shirt. I applied the next year as a Team Leader and got an amazing opportunity to grow within the conference community. I continued that role for the next 2 years after, in the mean time talking about a possible focus area to highlight adaptive technology within the conference. One of my dreams came true and  I am honored I get to Co-chair the Adaptive Technology Focus Area at SIGGRAPH 2019. 

My current personal projects I am currently working on is my blog Disability Champion, whose mission is to eliminate disability stigmas one day at a time. I hope this blog will do a small part to make our world more adaptable for all people with people with disabilities. 

Trina Roy

Trina has been a graphics geek since the early days of flying logos. An obsession with early music videos inspired her to leave her hometown of Seattle and head to Chicago to study VR and Scientific Visualization, dropping her into a wonderful world of gravitational waves and Big Bang theories. The physics experience helped her land a job writing physics-based simulation code for a little movie about a big green ogre named Shrek. Since then she’s worked in three countries on eleven different movies including Harry Potter, The Dark Knight and Inception. Now she’s back in the world of animation working as a Senior Engineer on Pixar’s RenderMan software team. A long-time member of ACM SIGGRAPH and the Visual Effects Society she has recently become a Surrogate Committee Member for the Scientific and Technical Academy Awards. She started attending SIGGRAPH as a student volunteer in 1992 and is now reaching out to the younger generation encouraging young women and girls to get involved in STEM careers. She mentors students through Skype in the Classroom and has served on several panels discussing STEM and technology careers, including the SIGGRAPH Women of Pixar panel.

Caroline Simard

Caroline Simard is passionate about building better workplaces for women through evidence-based solutions. As Managing Director of the Stanford VMware Women's Leadership Innovation Lab, she is responsible for the execution of the research agenda, business operations, and people management.  She also leads the Lab's Corporate Affiliates program. Previously, she was Senior Director of Research.

Caroline served as Associate Director of Diversity and Leadership at the Stanford School of Medicine. Prior to joining Stanford University, Caroline was Vice President of Research and Executive Programs at the Anita Borg Institute (ABI) for Women and Technology, where she led the creation and dissemination of research-based solutions to further gender diversity in scientific and technical careers. Prior to ABI, Caroline was a Researcher at the Center for Social Innovation of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and an Associate Director of Executive Programs.

Caroline holds a PhD from Stanford University and a Masters from Rutgers University. Her publications have focused on technical human and social capital, solutions to recruit, retain, and advance women and underrepresented talent in STEM fields, open innovation, and social networks.

Please Vote!

ACM SIGGRAPH needs your help electing members of the Executive Committee. This election will fill the role of Treasurer as well as two Directors At Large. It also includes important Bylaw changes. 

Each candidate on the ballot has authored a position statement explaining their vision of what they hope to accomplish as member of the EC.  Reviewing these statements and exploring member profiles will be useful in making informed decisions. Learn about the candidates and the Bylaw changes and cast your vote before 16:00 UTC 15 August 2018!

Treasurer Candidates

• Brad Lawrence
  • Position Statement
  • Member Profile
• David Spoelstra
  • Position Statement
  • Member Profile

Director At Large Candidates

• Mashhuda Glencross
  • Position Statement
  • Member Profile
• Evan Hirsch
  • Position Statement
  • Member Profile
• Terrance Masson
  • Position Statement
  • Member Profile
• Paul Strauss
  • Position Statement

Members of ACM SIGGRAPH who are in good standing as of June 1, 2018 have been sent voting information in an email message or letter from Election Services Corporation (ESC). If ACM does not have an email address on file, members will receive voting information via postal mail. Members also have the option of requesting a paper ballot. If you have not received an email from ESC, please contact them at acmsighelp@electionservicescorp.com or toll-free at 1-866-720-4357.  If you received the email, but need to retrieve your PIN you can do so as well.   

Bylaw Changes

Changes introduced in proposed amendment to the ACM SIGGRAPH Bylaws:

• All elected positions will be director positions and ACM SIGGRAPH’s officers will no longer be elected to specific positions through member elections.
• EC to appoint up to three voting members to its rank from core constituencies as needed
• Elect the directors to specific position

The first major change is that all elected positions will be director positions and ACM SIGGRAPH’s officers will no longer be elected to specific positions through member elections. Every year, after the new EC takes office, it will select new officers from within the EC to serve one-year terms. The officers will be the Chair, Chair-Elect, Treasurer, and Treasurer-Elect. The Chair-Elect will become the Chair and the Treasurer-Elect will become the Treasurer after the next election.

The second major change is to allow the EC to appoint up to three voting members to its rank. This change will allow the EC to increase representation from core constituencies as needed, and to allow key volunteers — such as the Conference Advisory Group Chair — full participation on the EC to better reflect their role in the organization.

The third major change is to elect the directors to specific positions. For example, if three director positions are open in a given election, the voters would be presented with at least two candidates for position A, another two for position B, etc. This change will allow the nominating committee to achieve increased diversity in skillset, area of expertise, and geography.

The other minor changes to the bylaws are changing current titles, for example, renaming “President,” to the new title of “Chair”, and changes that bring us into compliance with ACM or current practice for SIGGRAPH (e.g., the timing of the election).

The ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee believes that, taken together, these changes will allow for a more agile SIGGRAPH organization, better able to focus and act on the strategic issues concerning the field of computer graphics and interactive techniques.

Please see a copy of the proposed ACM SIGGRAPH Bylaws here.

ACM SIGGRAPH Workshop: Computer Graphics for Autonomous Driving Applications

Organizers: Antonio M. López, José A. Iglesias-Guitián

Autonomous driving (AD) will likely be the core of future intelligent mobility. As recent events have demonstrated, autonomous driving already involves complex scientific-technical, ethical, and legal issues.  The scientific-technical challenge is multidisciplinary as we are not only responsible for the development of the physical vehicles but also the sensors and the artificial intelligence (AI) on which they rely. One key question is how to assess the performance of AI drivers and ensure that the desired safety and reliability standards are reached. AI drivers require a variety of models (perception, control, decision making) that must be trained on millions of data-driven experiences.  Assessing their performance requires, in part, an understanding of whether that “data” or raw information from sensors with associated ground truth conveying depth, motion, and semantics, is sufficient to cover the scenarios that will be encountered in operation.

In this context, Computer Graphics (CG) has emerged as a key field supporting both performance assessment and training of AI drivers. Latest advances in CG suggest that it is feasible to design the corner cases both for training and testing. Simulation allows us to drive millions of miles to assess the performance of AI drivers, as well as generate millions of episodes for training the models behind AI drivers. This simulation-based approach requires advances in procedural generation of realistic traffic infrastructure, realistic behavior of traffic participants (human drivers, cyclists, pedestrians), augmented and mixed reality for on-board videos, simulation of sensors (cameras, LIDAR, RADAR, etc.) and multi-sensor suites, automatic generation of accurate and diverse ground truth, and beyond real-time simulations on multi-AI agents.

The goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers and practitioners of both autonomous driving and computer graphics fields to discuss the open challenges that must be addressed in order to accelerate the deployment of safe and reliable autonomous vehicles. Speakers with experience on the use of simulation and computer graphics for autonomous driving will be invited to share their work and insights regarding upcoming research challenges.

Topics

• Automatic generation of accurate and diverse ground truth
• Modeling and simulation of sensors (cameras, LIDAR, RADAR, etc.)
• Procedural generation of realistic traffic infrastructure
• Realistic behavior of traffic participants (human drivers, cyclists, pedestrians)
• Real-time multi-agent simulation
• Augmented and mixed reality leveraging on-board data sequences (e.g. videos)
• Management of on-board large data streams

The program of the Workshop has been released!

Organizers would like to thank Adam Bargteil, Jessica Hodgins, Adrien Treuille and Aaron Lefohn for their inestimable help on assembling this Workshop.

Speakers

Jose M Alvarez

Jose M. Alvarez is a Senior Deep Learning Engineer at NVIDIA working on scaling-up deep learning for autonomous driving. Previously, he was a senior researcher at Toyota Research Institute and at Data61/CSIRO (formerly NICTA) working on deep learning for large scale dynamic scene understanding. Prior to that, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at New York University under the supervision of Prof. Yann LeCun. He graduated with his Ph.D. from Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) in October 2010, with focus on robust road detection under real-world driving conditions. Dr. Alvarez did research stays at the University of Amsterdam (in 2008 and 2009) and the Electronics Research Group at Volkswagen (in 2010) and Boston College. Since 2014, he has served as an associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.

Simon Box

Simon is the Simulation Architect at Aurora Innovation, where the sim team is working to build a simulation framework that can virtually prototype all parts of the Aurora self-driving software stack. Simon’s previous work in simulation includes his PhD at the University for Cambridge, UK where he was simulating the trajectories of particles in electrostatic fields. In the Machine Learning and Perception group at Microsoft Research, where he build a rocket flight simulator and on the Autopilot team at Tesla Motors, where he led the simulation efforts.

Jose De Oliveira

Jose has 20 + years of industry, working at tech giants such as IBM, Microsoft and Uber in areas that range from real-time communications to enterprise security systems. In 2006 he focused his career on Machine Learning, working on content filtering solutions for Family Safety at Microsoft, where he headed the delivery of the first SmartScreen anti-phishing solution for Internet Explorer 7. He later drove the development of paid search relevance models for mobile devices at Bing Ads and worked on applying Machine Learning to geospatial problems at Bing Maps, continuing that work after joining Uber in 2015. In 2017 he joined the Machine Learning Team at Unity, leading the autonomous vehicles engineering project, part of Unity’s Industrial initiatives. He’s based out of Bellevue, WA.
 

Miguel Ferreira

Miguel Ferreira after helping brands, like Ferrero, De Agostini, MindChamps, shape the mobile entertainment space, he is now Senior Software Engineer at CVEDIA, where he pushes the boundaries of real-time rendering, developing sensor models for cutting-edge deep learning applications. SynCity is a hyper-realistic simulator specifically designed for deep learning algorithm development and training. Constructing complex 3D land, aerial and marine environments and generating ground truth data for sensor devices like LiDAR, radar, thermal, near and far IR, and cameras, SynCity unleashes the limitations of the physical world. When Miguel is not simulating the real world, he is traveling it in search of the perfect picture.
 

Yongjoon Lee

Yongjoon Lee is Engineering Manager of Simulation at Zoox, responsible for the simulation platform to validate and improve the safety and quality of autonomous driving software. Yongjoon joined Zoox from Bungie, where he worked as engineering lead for AI, animation, core action system, cinematic system, and mission scripting system teams. Prior to Bungie, he published six technical papers at SIGGRAPH on realistic motion synthesis using reinforcement learning. He holds a Ph.D in Computer Science & Engineering from the University of Washington.

Ming C. Lin

Ming C. Lin is currently the Elizabeth Stevinson Iribe Chair of Computer Science at the University of Maryland College Park and John R. & Louise S. Parker Distinguished Professor Emerita of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill. She is also an honorary Chair Professor (Yangtze Scholar) at Tsinghua University in China. She obtained her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. She received several honors and awards, including the NSF Young Faculty Career Award in 1995, Honda Research Initiation Award in 1997, UNC/IBM Junior Faculty Development Award in 1999, UNC Hettleman Award for Scholarly Achievements in 2003, Beverly W. Long Distinguished Professorship 2007-2010, Carolina Women’s Center Faculty Scholar in 2008, UNC WOWS Scholar 2009-2011, IEEE VGTC Virtual Reality Technical Achievement Award in 2010, and many best paper awards at international conferences. She is a Fellow of ACM, IEEE, and Eurographics.

Her research interests include computational robotics, haptics, physically-based modeling, virtual reality, sound rendering, and geometric computing. Her current projects include crowd and traffic simulation, modeling, and reconstruction at the city scale and autonomous driving via learning & simulation. She has (co-)authored more than 300 refereed publications in these areas and co-edited/authored four books. She has served on hundreds of program committees of leading conferences and co-chaired dozens of international conferences and workshops. She is currently a member of Computing Research Association Women (CRA-W) Board of Directors, Chair of IEEE Computer Society (CS) Fellows Committee, Chair of IEEE CS Computer Pioneer Award, and Chair of ACM SIGGRAPH Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award. She is a former member of IEEE CS Board of Governors, a former Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (2011-2014), a former Chair of IEEE CS Transactions Operations Committee, and a member of several editorial boards. She also has served on several steering committees and advisory boards of international conferences, as well as government and industrial technical advisory committees.
 

Dinesh Manocha

Dinesh Manocha is the Paul Chrisman Iribe Chair in Computer Science & Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Maryland College Park. He is also the Phi Delta Theta/Matthew Mason Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. He has won many awards, including Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow, the NSF Career Award, the ONR Young Investigator Award, and the Hettleman Prize for scholarly achievement. His research interests include multi-agent simulation, virtual environments, physically-based modeling, and robotics. His group has developed a number of packages for multi-agent simulation, crowd simulation, and physics-based simulation that have been used by hundreds of thousands of users and licensed to more than 60 commercial vendors. He has published more than 500 papers and supervised more than 35 PhD dissertations. He is an inventor of 9 patents, several of which have been licensed to industry. His work has been covered by the New York Times, NPR, Boston Globe, Washington Post, ZDNet, as well as DARPA Legacy Press Release. He is a Fellow of AAAI, AAAS, ACM, and IEEE and also received the Distinguished Alumni Award from IIT Delhi. He was a co-founder of Impulsonic, a developer of physics-based audio simulation technologies, which was acquired by Valve Inc.

Kevin McNamara

Kevin is the founder and CEO of Parallel Domain, a fast growing startup which has automated the generation of high fidelity virtual worlds and scenarios for simulation. He brings deep computer graphics experience having built and led a team within Apple's Special Projects Group focused on autonomous systems simulation, architected procedural content systems for Microsoft Game Studios, and contributed to academy award winning films at Pixar Animation Studios. Kevin holds a degree in computer science from Harvard University and resides in Palo Alto, CA

Ashu Rege

Ashu Rege is the Vice President of Software at Zoox, responsible for Zoox’s entire software platform including machine learning, motion planning, perception, localization, mapping, and simulation. Ashu joined Zoox from NVIDIA, where he was VP of Computer Vision & Robotics responsible for NVIDIA’s autonomous vehicle and drone technology projects. Previously, he held other senior roles at NVIDIA including VP of the Content & Technology group developing core graphics, physics simulation and GPU computing technologies, and associated software. Prior to NVIDIA, he co-founded and worked at various startups related to computer graphics, laser scanning, Internet and network technologies. Ashu holds a Ph.D in Computer Science from U.C. Berkeley.

German Ros

German Ros is a Research Scientist at Intel Intelligent Systems Lab (Santa Clara, California), working on topics at the intersection of Machine Learning, Simulation, Virtual worlds, Transfer Learning and Intelligent Autonomous agents. He leads the CARLA organization as part of the Open Source Vision Foundation. Before joining Intel Labs, German served as a Research Scientist at Toyota Research Institute (TRI), where he conducted research in the area of Simulation for Autonomous Driving, Scene Understanding and Domain Adaptation, in the context of Autonomous Driving. He also helped industrial partners, such as Toshiba, Yandex, Drive.ai, and Volkswagen to leverage simulation and virtual words to empower their machine learning efforts and served at the Computer Vision Center (CVC) as a technical lead for the simulation team. German Ros obtained his PhD in Computer Science at Autonomous University of Barcelona & the Computer Vision Center.
 

Philipp Slusallek

Philipp Slusallek is Scientific Director at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), where he heads the research area on Agents and Simulated Reality. At Saarland University he has been a professor for Computer Graphics since 1999, a principle investigator at the German Excellence-Cluster on “Multimodal Computing and Interaction”since 2007, and Director for Research at the Intel Visual Computing Institute since 2009. Before coming to Saarland University, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Stanford University. He originally studied physics in Frankfurt and Tübingen (Diploma/M.Sc.) and got his PhD in Computer Science from Erlangen University. He is associate editor of Computer Graphics Forum, a fellow of Eurographics, a member of acatech (German National Academy of Science and Engineering), and a member of the European High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence. His research covers a wide range of topics including artificial intelligence, simulated/digital reality, real-time realistic graphics, high-performance computing, motion modeling & synthesis, novel programming models, computational sciences, 3D-Internet technology, and others.

Gavriel State

Gavriel State is a Senior Director, System Software at NVIDIA, based in Toronto, where he leads efforts involving applications of AI technology to gaming and vice versa, in addition to work in remastering games for NVIDIA’s SHIELD TV platform. Previously, Gav founded TransGaming Inc, and spent 15 years focused on games and rendering technologies.

Logistics

A $40 registration fee is required by 9am Pacific Time on Tuesday Aug 7 to attend lunch. Unregistered attendees may participate if space allows, but lunch will not be provided.

Applications will be accepted on first come/first served basis until August 7th, 9AM PDT. Apply to participate!