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The SIGGRAPH 2023 Practitioners Sessions

Jul 18, 2023 |

Discuss Best Practices for Professional Development and Career Growth at the SIGGRAPH 2023 Practitioners Sessions

No one is ever born brilliant at their job. Behind every successful person is years of experience, learnings, and reflections that help them continually build a career that best bridges the gap between what they want to do and who they want to be. With information now within a keyboard’s reach, it has never been easier to pursue professional self-education on one’s terms. At the same time, the rise of automation, fluid job markets and a continued evolution of technologies and best practices means that a professional career is a continuous learning journey rather than the outcome of a single qualification.

It can often be difficult to find the right direction for one’s continued career growth. Whether you are just starting out in a new role, are an experienced professional looking to contribute value to your team, or are looking to reskill for a different role and/or industry, few qualities have the same impact on your trajectory as your own understanding of what balance of skills and best practices work best for you. Everyone has their own definition of professional success, and knowing yours allows you to make more meaningful contributions, affect change, and find better ways to manage your time for your professional work, your personal life and everything in between.

To this end, ACM SIGGRAPH would like to invite you to the first ACM SIGGRAPH Practitioners Sessions at SIGGRAPH 2023 focusing on career growth in computer graphics and interactive techniques. The ACM SIGGRAPH Practitioners Sessions are an in-person sessions for practitioners at the conference to have open discussions, with like-minded peers, on professional development in our industries, including but not limited to different approaches to creating and scoping engineering projects, developing tech stacks, identifying opportunities for taking research to practice and the productization journey thereof, and finding better ways to balance and support your and your team’s needs in between. These sessions are organized by the ACM SIGGRAPH Practitioner Career Development Committee (PCDC), a standing of committee of ACM SIGGRAPH whose directive is to plan, develop, and facilitate activities that support the career development of computer graphics and interactive techniques practitioners across different industries worldwide.

The ACM SIGGRAPH Practitioners Sessions will be held on Tuesday to Thursday, August 8-10, 2023, at the ACM Village Theater (West Hall 501, Los Angeles Convention Center). The sessions are open to everyone with a SIGGRAPH Conference Pass.

We believe that the ACM SIGGRAPH Practitioners Sessions is a small step towards having open community discussions on skills and best practices that, alongside the organization’s commitment to technical skills development, is necessary to building a well-rounded professional career in computer graphics and interactive techniques. We look forward to seeing you and having these conversations in person at this year’s conference, and are always open to feedback on how we can do better or more in the future.

Sincerely,
Juan Miguel de Joya
ACM SIGGRAPH Practitioner Career Development Committee Chair
Autodesk Consulting Media & Entertainment

The ACM SIGGRAPH Practitioner Sessions

Program Details

ACM SIGGRAPH Practitioners: Skills You Need to Step Up!
Tuesday, August 8, 2023, 10:00AM – 12:00NN PST
ACM SIGGRAPH Theater, West Hall 501, Los Angeles Convention Center
More details on our website
Find us on the conference program

ACM SIGGRAPH Practitioners: Research to Practice: Getting There and Back Again
Wednesday, August 9, 2023, 10:00AM – 12:00NN PST
ACM SIGGRAPH Theater, West Hall 501, Los Angeles Convention Center
More details on our website
Find us on the conference program

ACM SIGGRAPH Practitioners Town Hall
Wednesday, August 9, 2023, 10:00AM – 12:00NN PST
ACM SIGGRAPH Theater, West Hall 501, Los Angeles Convention Center
More details on our website
Find us on the conference program

Featured Speakers (at time of writing)

Ken Museth
Senior Director, Simulation Technology, NVIDIA
Recipient of the ACM SIGGRAPH 2023 Practitioner Award

Peter Crossley
Director of Engineering, Nuke

Mark Elendt
Mathematician, SideFX Software

Eric Haines
Distinguished Engineer, NVIDIA

Pete Shirley
Vice President, Graphics, Activision

Dan Ring
Head of Research, Foundry

Orly Liba
Staff Research Scientist, YouTube

Per Christensen
Principal Scientist, Pixar’s RenderMan Group

Frederic Servant
Director of Engineering, Entertainment & Media Solutions, Autodesk

Patrick Cozzi
CEO, Cesium

Computer Graphics Chronicles

Jul 11, 2023 |

As SIGGRAPH celebrates the 50th anniversary of the annual conference with SIGGRAPH 2023, we are pleased to present a series of conversations with the people who built the field of computer graphics.

Watch the Computer Graphics Chronicles playlist to hear about the personal and professional journeys of pioneers Jim Blinn, Turner Whitted, Marceli Wein, Sara Bly, Maureen Stone, Mary Whitton, Nick England, Ingrid Carlbom, Dave Kasik and Copper Giloth.  You’ll learn how they got their start, who their role models and mentors were and how they participated in the creation and development of computer graphics over the last five decades.

ACM SIGGRAPH Conference Grant

Jun 29, 2023 |

ACM SIGGRAPH offers support to existing and new members of the SIGGRAPH community whose early career potential impact is recognized as extraordinary and who can demonstrate financial need to attend SIGGRAPH 2023. It is also intended to simultaneously highlight SIGGRAPH’s abiding recognition of the value that diversity in our community brings to the CG/IT domains and its importance to their vibrancy and future positive impact to society.

ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS:

  • Any ACM SIGGRAPH member (professional or student) in the field of computer graphics and interactive techniques but not limited to, technology innovations, artistic production, education, societal services, leadership and/or broader impacts within those industries.
  • Local is considered to be within 200 mile radius from the Los Angeles Convention Center (local grant year)
  • Grantees may receive only one grant per conference year
  • Budget requests and reimbursement are subject to the ACM SIGGRAPH travel policies
  • These grants will be awarded to individuals from underrepresented groups in the CG/IT fields listed in ACM/SIGGRAPH annual demographic surveys and questionnaires.  Nominees from universities, NGO’s, industry, and governmental organizations including students, early career industry and academic professionals in the CG/IT domains will be considered and are encouraged to apply for travel grant support.

HOW IT WORKS:

  • Submit a nomination single PDF package which includes a potential contribution statement of the candidate in expression of financial need to urt@siggraph.org by July 15, 2023.
  • 1 page C.V.
  • 2 letters of recommendation with a 500 word limit each
  • Verification as an ACM SIGGRAPH Member
  • A selection committee of 5 current SIGGRAPH members will review all the nominations.
  • For 2023, grantees will be selected by 20 July, 2023, and will be invited to attend SIGGRAPH 2023.

Grantees will receive a full Conference Pass in addition to receiving financial support reimbursing documented cost of SIGGRAPH 2023 attendance*

Publicity: Any information supplied for the application must not be confidential and can be used for publicity purposes by ACM SIGGRAPH. Awardees give ACM SIGGRAPH permission to use representative images of their work, member profiles, stories, subsequent activities in connection with the SIGGRAPH community and organization, etc. for use in ACM SIGGRAPH publications, at conferences sponsored by ACM/ACM SIGGRAPH, or other publicity purposes.

Conflict of Interest: ACM’s conflict-of-interest guidelines apply to all award nominations. The SIGGRAPH Award Chair of the SIGGRAPH EC is responsible for ensuring the COI guidelines are followed and resolving any issues that cannot be resolved by the respective Award Committee Chair.

ACM LINKS TO REFERENCE:

Ø  Guidelines on Conflict of Interest: https://awards.acm.org/awards-committees/conflict-of-interest

Ø  General ACM Conflict of Interest Policy: https://www.acm.org/special-interest-groups/volunteer-resources/acm-conflict-of-interest-policy

Announcing ACM SIGGRAPH Award Winners

Jun 11, 2023 |

ACM SIGGRAPH is pleased to announce the winners of this year’s awards and new members of the SIGGRAPH Academy, listed below.

Steven Anson Coons Award
Marie-Paule Cani
For outstanding contributions to computer graphics in shape modeling, computer animation, and content creation tools.

Computer Graphics Achievement Award
Wolfgang Heidrich
For fundamental contributions to the development and analysis of computational imaging and display systems.

Significant New Researcher Award
Felix Heide 
For novel and impactful research on the hardware and software of computational cameras.

Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award
Cheng Zhang
For a dissertation presenting significant advances in physics-based rendering and providing both practical tools and theoretical foundations for future differentiable rendering algorithms

Honorable mention to Dr. Georg Sperl

Outstanding Service Award
Lee Yong Tsui
For his service to the computer graphics community in Asia, including the founding and nurturing of the SIGGRAPH Asia Conference

Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement in Digital Art
Paul Brown
For his pioneering efforts in the fields of computational art, generative systems, and cellular automata.”

ACM SIGGRAPH Practitioner Award
Ken Museth, NVIDIA
For the creation and continued development of OpenVDB”

ACM SIGGRAPH Distinguished Educator Award
Scott Owen
For his work done to establish influential programs and provide opportunities for educators in and beyond the SIGGRAPH community”

ACM SIGGRAPH Academy
Niloy Mitra, University College London
For his pioneering technical contributions in shape analysis and structure-aware geometry processing.

David J. Kasik
For technical contributions and industry impact in the areas of computer-aided design, user interfaces, visual analytics, and massive model visualization.

2023 SIGGRAPH Pioneers

2023 SIGGRAPH Pioneers

Apr 12, 2023 |

The SIGGRAPH Pioneers group is proud to announce our Featured Speakers for 2023.

For the first time, we will have co-presenters, the two pioneers who literally wrote the book on CGI that launched innumerable careers, James D. Foley and Andries van Dam!

Their 1982 book, Fundamentals of Interactive Computer Graphics (the original “Foley and van Dam”) helped to define for an entire generation what computer graphics was and how it could be taught. Both Jim and Andy will speak in person at the Pioneers Reception in Los Angeles on the evening of August 8, 2023. They will reflect on their careers and the influence of their original book and the two subsequent editions. They are the perfect speakers to help the Pioneers celebrate the 50th anniversary of the conference!

Andries van Dam is the Thomas J. Watson, Jr. Professor of Technology and Education, and Professor of Computer Science, at Brown University. He contributed to the first hypertext system in the late 1960s, and co-founded the precursor of today’s ACM SIGGRAPH organization. In 2019, he was awarded the inaugural ACM SIGGRAPH Distinguished Educator Award. Andy’s research includes work on computer graphics, hypermedia systems, user interfaces including immersive virtual reality pen- and touch-computing, and educational software. He has been working for over four decades on systems for creating and reading electronic books with interactive illustrations for use in teaching and research. The character of Andy in the film Toy Story is named after van Dam.

James D. Foley is Professor Emeritus at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he held the Fleming Chair in the College of Computing. He was Interim Dean of Georgia Tech’s College of Computing from 2008 to 2010, is an IEEE Fellow, and won both the SIGCHI Lifetime Achievement Award and the prestigious ACM SIGGRAPH Steven F. Coons award. According to Wikipedia “He is perhaps best known as the co-author of several widely used textbooks in the field of computer graphics, of which over 400,000 copies are in print and translated in ten languages.” He has also held faculty positions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and The George Washington University, and management positions at Mitsubishi Electric Research.

The SIGGRAPH Pioneers is a network of researchers, developers, artists, and educators who have been working in the fields of computer graphics and interactive techniques for at least 20 years. Many members have been in the field since its beginnings more than 50 years ago. The Pioneers hold annual receptions at the SIGGRAPH conference as an informal get-together with old friends, and to hear remarks from a Featured Speaker whose career had a profound influence on the field. Jim and Andy will join a pantheon of recent speakers, including future technologist Ken Perlin, scientific visualization artist Donna Cox, effects wizard Douglas Trumbull, production pioneer Jeff Kleiser, researcher Jim Blinn, co-founder of PIXAR Alvy Ray Smith, and CGI Art pioneer David Em.

-Ed Kramer
Chair, SIGGRAPH Pioneers