Member Profile: Mariojulio Zaldivar
1. What do you do, and how long have you been doing it?
I am a software engineer, and I have been in the videogames industry since 2015, contributing on games and their technology. Prior to that, I worked as a Quality Assurance Engineer in other industries for almost 10 years, since 2005.
2. What was your first job?
My first job was at an internet cafe, back in 1999. It was probably 2 dollars per hour but it was very fulfilling, as a 15 years old kid… I recall finding purpose by helping old people get online doing things like calling families or playing the version of pacman that the PCs had.
3. Where did you complete your formal education?
I completed my undergraduate degree in the National University of Callao, in Peru, back in 2005. Then, I completed a computer science master degree at Digipen institute of Technology in Redmond, WA, 10 years later
4. How did you first get involved with ACM SIGGRAPH?
It happened in my first SIGGRAPH conference! In 2024 I attended the conference in Colorado when I started getting more exposure to GPUs and graphics technology in general. I had a big space in my schedule and decided to visit a group talking about the chapters. That’s when the magic happened, I met Julian Calderon from the Bogotá chapter and since I was curious I asked him to explain to me everything about the chapter. I thought chapters was a great opportunity to bring more awareness about graphics and interactivity technology to my country
5. What is your favorite memory of a SIGGRAPH conference?
Real-Time live. Hats off for that level of production. But in general, I remember meeting and getting to know a lot of interesting people from the discipline.
6. Describe a project that you would like to share with the ACM SIGGRAPH community.
Of course! A few months ago we opened a youtube channel where we post a short video twice a month. You can find it here. Here, some renowned local professionals share their experience and trends in technology, always around the premise of how it can be impacted by or impact to computer graphics discipline,
Also, as the lima chapter, we are cooking a live event that is still in the pre-production phase. But the idea will be to potentially collaborate with other chapters. More info soon!
7. If you could have dinner with one living or non-living person, who would it be and why?
Professionally speaking, I’d love for an opportunity to have dinner with Ed Catmull. I personally studied his work on smooth curves/surfaces during my master degree where I did some work on that.
8. What is something most people don’t know about you?
Probably now my colleagues do not know I was pretty bad at arithmetics when I was in elementary school (and, sometimes, only sometimes, I still use my fingers to count, ha ha!) . However, when I met algebra, it made me love math!
9. From which single individual have you learned the most in your life? What did they teach you?
I would say my grandmother. She instilled in me the taste for challenge, but overall, to whatever I do, do it with love, without hurting anyone.
10. Is there someone in particular who has influenced your decision to work with ACM SIGGRAPH?
I blame Julian, ha ha. Jokes aside, I think it’s mostly the collective group of all the professionals producing the big conference, that was really motivating and inspiring.
11. What can you point to in your career as your proudest moment?
Definitely when I left everything professionally speaking in my country, status, years of experience, etc, to pursue a masters degree that would open doors to the games industry which is something I was dreaming of since I was a kid. The feeling of being accepted by the college I wanted to study in, and years laters, beginning a new career, in games, in a big tech company… that was a dream come true! Yes, I am proud of that :)