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On January 14, 2026, at 8:00 pm Eastern, the ACM/SIGGRAPH Pioneers will present the next in our year-round series of panels on topics of importance to the computer graphics and interactive techniques communities.

Panelists have been selected to provide a diverse overview on how computer graphics, 3D printing, AR, VR and AI have evolved and are being used today in the medical profession. Topics vary from the earliest work in molecular visualization to creating animation for surgical techniques for Abbot, Medtronic, and Johnson & Johnson using software like Maya, ZBrush, V-Ray and Unreal, to the 3D design and manufacture of prosthetic limbs, to developing video games for physical therapy, interactive training for nurses, and AI-powered immersive platforms and technical standards for XR in healthcare.

The Panel is open to all ACM/SIGGRAPH Pioneers and their associates, you can register at this zoom link: 

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_we_7IrECRdSJV7Tekybg5A

The ACM/SIGGRAPH Pioneers are a seasoned group of computer graphics influencers from the fields of education, research, engineering, and entertainment. The group originated in 1980 with one requirement for membership – 20 or more years of professional experience in the computer graphics or interactive techniques industries. The Pioneers have committed to serve the worldwide computer graphics community in a variety of year-round ways, including presenting panels with experts on wide-ranging topics of interest. For links to all previous panels and other videos, click this link:  Pioneers Panels and other Videos

Ed Kramer

Chair, ACM/SIGGRAPH Pioneers

PANELIST BIOS:

NELSON MAX received a PhD in Mathematics from Harvard University in1967, and started working on computer animation for mathematics visualization in 1969. He has worked for most of his career at the University of California (Berkeley and Davis campuses, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory). His research interests are in the areas of scientific visualization, computer animation, realistic computer graphics rendering, multi-view stereo reconstruction, and augmented reality. In visualization he worked on molecular graphics, and on volume and flow visualization, particularly on irregular finite element meshes. He has rendered realistic lighting effects in clouds, trees, and water waves, and has produced numerous computer animations, shown at the annual ACM SIGGRAPH conferences, and in OMNIMAX stereo at the Fujitsu Pavilions at Expo ’85 in Tsukuba Japan, and Expo ’90 in Osaka Japan. He is a Fellow of the ACM, and the winner of its 2007 Steven A. Coons award.

RAYMOND (RANDY) NELSON:  Illustration is in my DNA.  I’m fascinated with all things microscopic. The extraordinary capabilities of today’s 3D applications coupled with my imagination has led to a range of explorations that tend to merge fantasy, biology and everything in between. I have been an animator and illustrator for over 30 years, and my passion has been creating engaging and highly interactive 3d content using state of the art software. My focus has been on medical animation – anatomy, both invasive and non-invasive surgical procedures, and medical devices. I also focused on creating 360 panoramic 3D imagery for VR. I’ve created original artwork for Fortune 500 Medical Device and Pharmaceutical companies including Abbot, Medtronic, and Johnson & Johnson, just to name a few.  I am retired now, but in my career, I brought projects to life through a mix of CG illustration, digital visualization, VR design and 3D modeling, using software that included Maya, Mari, 3DS Max, Marvelous Designer, Motionbuilder, Mudbox, Solidworks, Substance Painter, ZBrush, Vray, Phoenix FD effects and the Adobe suite of tools. https://www.raymondnelsen.com

PAUL DIEFENBACH, PhD, is Associate Professor in Drexel University’s Digital Media department. He is founder of Drexel’s game research laboratory, the RePlay Lab, and leads projects in BCI, neuroplasticity, healthcare games, and serious games. He is also founder and CTO of two companies in healthcare: enablegames.com which provides active video games for physical therapy for people with disabilities, and cere-sim.com which develops medical training simulations for 20,000 nurses.  He has an extensive background in 3D, game development, and human factors and simulation and holds two patents. Prior to Drexel, he was founder and CTO of OpenWorlds Inc. He was PI on Phase 1 & 2 SBIRs for NASA and the Army, and provided technology for Lockheed, Sony, Microsoft, and Boeing for 15 years. His pioneering 1996 Ph.D. on multi-pass rendering serves as the platform for today’s modern real-time graphics, and led to consulting for companies such as Nvidia.  While at UPenn, was also a key developer of the Jack® software at UPenn’s Human Modeling and Simulation (HMS) Laboratory under Dr. Norman Badler. He has presented at worldwide conferences including SIGGRAPH and Eurographics, and has been featured on the CBS Evening News. Dr. Diefenbach holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.S. in Computer Science from RPI. 

MATT DOMBROWSKI is a Professor of Emerging Media at UCF and Creative Director at Limbitless Solutions, a nonprofit organization that provides prosthetic arms at no cost to children with limb differences. In addition to designing and visualizing bionics, he develops video games that help children learn to use their prosthetics and improve muscle control through EMG-based gameplay. His company utilizes CGI for modeling and printing the arms, game development, and other purposes. They also create hands-free experiences for the ALS community and training video games using mixed reality.  Limbitless Solutions has collaborated with partners such as Marvel (Iron Man), 343 Industries (Halo), Ubisoft, and Riot Games to bring creativity and empowerment to their bionic arm mission. They also conduct clinical trials and partner with hospitals to ensure that each arm delivers both functionality and confidence.  Learn more at Limbitless Solutions Overview

LAURA KUSUMOTO is a technology strategist and innovation leader whose career bridges immersive computing, enterprise innovation, and digital health. Her early work with Forterra Systems advanced multi-user, networked virtual environments for medical simulation, pioneering applications of interactive 3D graphics for training and collaboration. She has guided emerging technology initiatives across Meta, Deloitte, Disney, LEGO, Intuit, Kaiser Permanente, and the U.S. Veterans Administration, defining frameworks to assess and scale AR, VR, and AI solutions in complex organizations. Today with IterationZero, Laura advises startups developing AI-powered immersive platforms for health and well-being. She serves on the Board of XR Women Global, the Advisory Board of the International Virtual Reality in Healthcare Association, and as Secretary of the Virtual World Society, where she leads the development of technical standards for XR in healthcare. https://www.iterationzero.io/

Moderator:

Dr. William J. Joel, Professor Emeritus at Western Connecticut State University, recently retired from teaching Computer Science full time after thirty-nine years in academia. He is Director of the Computer Graphics & Animation Research Projects initiative, and a member of the Steering Committee for the Massive Collaborative Animation Projects Initiative.

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, 2026.

Each year at this time, members of our community take on new roles and challenges. Read on to learn more about the ACM SIGGRAPH members leading the way.

New Leadership for the Executive Committee

Darin Grant, after spending his first year on the Executive Committee as the Chair-Elect, Darin takes the helm as our new ACM SIGGRAPH Chair.  An experienced leader in both his professional and volunteer life, Darin is also the Co-Chair, Scientific and Technical Awards Committee. 

Darin is joined by David Spoelstra, who was previously appointed last year as Treasurer-Elect, and who now starts his term as Treasurer. Dave brings financial experience from years of senior engineering management roles at both startups and Fortune 500 companies, as well as previous experience as ACM SIGGRAPH Treasurer.

The Officer Selection Advisory Group (OSAG)  is also very pleased to announce that June Kim has been selected as the new Chair-Elect. June will work closely with Darin and take over as Chair in September 2026.

The OSAG is also excited that Jenny Dana was selected as Treasurer-Elect, marking the first time we’ve had an elected Treasurer in a number of years. Jenny will shadow and support  David this year and take over as Treasurer in September 2026.

New Members of the Executive Committee

ACM released the results of the SIGGRAPH Executive Committee election in late August. The following members of our community have started their three-year terms on the Executive Committee. These new Directors bring with them a wealth of experience, as leaders, as community members, and as seasoned ACM SIGGRAPH volunteers.

Kalina Borkiewicz

Kalina Borkiewicz is a scientist, artist, and data storyteller who bridges scientific visualization, film production, and human-centered computing. Kalina has previously served as the 2023 SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival Director, the 2025 Courses Chair, a member of the Nominations åCommittee, and as a reviewer and juror.

Baoquan Chen

Baoquan Chen is a Distinguished Professor and Associate Dean at Peking University. Baoquan’s previous service to SIGGRAPH includes chairing SIGGRAPH Asia 2014, serving on numerous committees, and editorial work for ACM Transactions on Graphics.

Jenny Dana

Jenny Dana is an independent computer graphics software practitioner with extensive experience spanning academia, government, startups, Fortune 100 companies, and entrepreneurship. Jenny has been an active volunteer for many years, including on the Professional & Student Chapters Committee, a previous term on the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee, and countless roles as a subcommittee member or juror.

Read the Meet the Candidates article to learn even more about our newest EC members.

Thank you to all the candidates who put their names forward for the 2025 election. We appreciate your willingness to serve our community.

If you are an ACM SIGGRAPH member and are interested in serving ACM SIGGRAPH in a leadership role, please reach out to the ACM SIGGRAPH Nominations Committee.

As I bid farewell to the Executive Committee and my year as Chair, I find myself reflecting on what I have learned about SIGGRAPH’s history. Time that has flown by. It has been intense in many ways, requiring a great deal of thinking, questioning, consultation and debate. I have had a chance to share my contemplations: from the scale of our organizational activities, the fifty-year history of the SIGGRAPH conference, the state of our reserves, to how and where we fell short of our members’ expectations. 

One of the stories I did not get to tell is about the origins of SIGGRAPH Asia. When I started my career in computer graphics, SIGGRAPH Asia was a new venue. I was dimly aware that it was being watched carefully, but I was a graduate student still finding my sea legs so to speak, and I never really asked anyone what that really meant.

In the past few months, I learned that in the early 2000s there was the GRAPHITE conference (sponsored by ACM SIGGRAPH) which was an international event on computer graphics and interactive techniques held in Australasia and Southeast Asia. GRAPHITE was organized by a group of professors from the area. At SIGGRAPH 2006, in Boston, a group of professors from this group, including Lee Yong Tsui (a.k.a. YT), met with Scott Owen (President, SIGGRAPH, at the time) and Alyn Rockwood (a.k.a., Rock, and Vice President at the time) and asked them to consider doing a full SIGGRAPH Conference in Asia, with Papers of course, but also Emerging Technology, Art, Education, and so on.

Rock and Scott discussed it. Scott formed an ad hoc committee (the President could do that then) with Rock as Chair and Scott was on the committee. Rock then recruited about 15 professors and practitioners from Asia, including people from Singapore (the original people we met with), Japan (Masa Inakage, most recently on the EC from 2021-2024), China, Taiwan, South Korea, India, Australia, and other countries. Because of the political situation at the time, this committee was careful to note that the people were not representing their country but were a group of people representing Asia. There was an email discussion, and they decided to meet at GRAPHITE 2006 (Chaired by YT), held in Kuala Lumpur in December 2006.

At that meeting it was decided that SA was an excellent idea to pursue as it would greatly expand the awareness of both Computer Graphics and ACM SIGGRAPH in Asia. At the time, the committee defined “Asia” as all countries between Japan and India and including Australia and New Zealand. By moving around to different countries, the hope was to expand our Chapters network and get more people in Asia involved. 

(Scott’s note: I do not think we wrote an explicit mission statement, but it was implicit that we would try to ultimately have SA in as many countries as possible. We assumed that SA and the SACAG would evolve to primarily serve the Asian community but always with a strong non-Asia international component.)

After the meeting Rock and Scott commissioned two marketing studies to determine the financial feasibility of SA, and they were both positive. They knew there would be start-up costs, so they asked the EC to approve the project with a limit of about $1M, and they did. The fledgling conference could lose up to that amount but that was all, and then it would have to stop. They then sent out a request for proposals and received two – one from Singapore with YT as Chair (he later became the first Asian SACAG Chair) and one from Japan with Masa as Chair. The EC chose Singapore as the first conference and Japan as the second. Later the third conference was in Seoul, South Korea with Prof. Ko as Chair.

The three conferences were all run on the SIGGRAPH model with Koelnmesse (KM) as the primary contractor (the SIGGRAPH Asia version of SmithBucklin) and other local contractors. The conferences were successful in terms of the number of attendees and quality of the conference but all lost money. By the end of the third conference, the project had gone over its $1M limit. It almost converted to a papers only conference when KM offered a new financial model where they take the financial risk. This was not an easy sell to ACM headquarters as no other ACM SIG had or has a conference run on this model. However, ACM agreed to the arrangement, and it continues to be the only conference that runs on this model.

One critical point that I do recall from my own dim memory of the beginnings of SIGGRAPH Asia is the perception of the technical papers program. Because accepted papers would be published in ACM Trans. on Graphics (TOG), they were set up to be considered on par with SIGGRAPH papers. At the time, I did not realize the effort it took behind the scenes to make this happen. I learned that initially TOG agreed to accept only papers that their editors thought were of SIGGRAPH quality. If this meant no papers, then so be it. The first SIGGRAPH Asia papers committee under Kurt Akeley was told that the same standards that applied to SIGGRAPH also applied to SIGGRAPH Asia. Today there is no doubt that SIGGRAPH Asia on an equal footing to SIGGRAPH with regard to the quality of the research publications and the rigor of the review process.

Just as the pioneers who envisioned SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia created new platforms for intellectual and community engagement, we too have an opportunity to redefine how we engage in publication, presentation, and interaction. As a practicing faculty member running an active research program in a publish-or-perish world, I am watching the landscape of publication and dissemination shift and change. What might we imagine? Restructuring the publication process to lean more heavily on year-round review and publication of work digitally? Switching out paper presentations in favor of doctoral consortium style presentations by senior graduate students on their best work? Focusing in-person interaction time on mentoring and community building activities?

Whatever the future brings, I look forward to being there with you.

Eakta Jain

Chair

Credits: This note was prepared using materials taken from email sent by Scott Owen and notes from Alyn Rockwood and Jessica Hodgins.

The 2025 ACM SIGGRAPH 365 Community Showcases showcased SIGGRAPH’s yearlong commitment to education, professional development, and artistic expression from ACM SIGGRAPH Standing Committees. As part of the SIGGRAPH 2025 conference, community showcases offer a platform to showcase innovative content on year-round activities.

This year, SIGGRAPH Standing Committees and Affinity Groups presented on various topics important to the SIGGRAPH community, ranging from sessions like the SIGGRAPH Educators Program showcasing the winning entries from the SpaceTime competition to networking meet ups hosted by the Chapters Committee. Additional topics covered by Standing Committees and Affinity Groups include:

• Resume & Reel Reviews, hosted by the Early Career Development Committee;
• Numerous sessions hosted by the Digital Arts Committee, including how to get involved in the creative community and information about SPARKS;
• SIGGRAPH for Beginners
• The first meetup of the Rainbow Affinity Group as a formally recognized SIGGRAPH Affinity Group;
• The annual Pioneers meet up;
• Women of SIGGRAPH Conversations (WOSC)’s breakfast focused on navigating change during periods of transition; and
• Volunteerism with ACM SIGGRAPH.

In addition to the ACM SIGGRAPH 365 Community Showcases, the ACM SIGGRAPH Village was once again a central gathering space at SIGGRAPH 2025 in Vancouver, BC, offering attendees a welcoming environment to learn more about the organization, connect with peers, and explore opportunities for involvement.

Members were encouraged to take part in shaping the future of the organization by casting their votes in the ACM SIGGRAPH elections, while non-members were invited to join and become part of the global community advancing computer graphics and interactive techniques.

The Education Committee played a prominent role in the Village this year, creating a supportive hub for educators to share curriculum strategies, build professional connections, and engage in fellowship. A highlight was the faculty-submitted student animation reel, showcasing outstanding work from the Education Committee Competition. This collection of student projects underscored the creativity, innovation, and teaching excellence within the ACM SIGGRAPH community.

The Digital Arts Community (DAC) contributed with a curated animation reel from artists within their community, offering fresh perspectives and creative explorations across diverse media. Meanwhile, the ACM SIGGRAPH Chapters highlighted the impact of their year-round activities, showcasing events, collaborations, and outreach efforts that extend the SIGGRAPH experience well beyond the annual conference.

The ACM SIGGRAPH Village continues to serve as a vibrant center for collaboration and inspiration, reflecting ACM SIGGRAPH’s mission to foster learning, creativity, and community across disciplines.