Member Profile: Holly Rushmeier
1. What do you do, and how long have you been doing it?
I am a professor of Computer Science at Yale University. I do a balance of teaching (graphics courses and sometimes Introduction to CS) and research in topics related to rendering.
2. What was your first job?
After getting my BS degree my first full time job was working as an engineer at Boeing. (Prior to that in high school and college I had jobs babysitting, mowing lawns and cleaning.)
3. Where did you complete your formal education?
BS,MS and PhD at Cornell University.
4. How did you first get involved with ACM SIGGRAPH?
Presented a paper at SIGGRAPH 87 in Anaheim.
5. What is your favorite memory of a SIGGRAPH conference?
The SIGGRAPH 96 conference when I was on the committee working with a lot of terrific people.
6. Describe a project that you would like to share with the ACM SIGGRAPH community.
The most recent interesting, fun, and rewarding project has been working with conservation scientists and computer scientists to develop software for cultural heritage studies.
7. If you could have dinner with one living or non-living person, who would it be and why?
Jane Austen. I would love to hear about her life and she could certainly keep the conversation going. From Persuasion
“My idea of good company, Mr Elliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.”
“You are mistaken,” said he gently, “that is not good company; that is the best.”
8. What is something most people don’t know about you?
I didn’t get a driver’s license until I was 23. I had to get new glasses to pass the test, and found out that there was a lot of detail in the world that I hadn’t been seeing.
9. From which single individual have you learned the most in your life? What did they teach you?
Of course I learned the most, practically everything, from my parents. Since my dad was a faculty member, I also learned a lot about teaching and research from him.
10. Is there someone in particular who has influenced your decision to work with ACM SIGGRAPH?
My graduate advisor Ken Torrance introduced me to computer graphics and SIGGRAPH.
11. What can you point to in your career as your proudest moment?
Speaking at an AAUW meeting the year I won one of their fellowships for my last year in graduate school. I talked about how happy I was to be able to take advantage of an opportunity that my mother and grandmothers never had, and that they had made possible for me through their hard work. I didn’t realize how it would resonate with that audience — they were all women working hard to make opportunities for the next generation.