ACADEMIA

This week at SIGGRAPH 2004, the world's leading computer graphics conference, computer scientists from Microsoft Research's Beijing, Cambridge, U.K. and Redmond, Wash., labs will present the results of 12 research papers, nine of which were done in partnership with universities around the world. The work of Microsoft Research accounts for nearly 15 percent of the Papers Program, the highest number of any single organization. Researchers collaborated with colleagues and affiliates from the University of Washington, University of Utah, Stanford University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, University of Toronto, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Zhejiang University, and Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Technologies and projects range from investigating novel ways of video-based rendering to pursuing innovative advancements in interactive modeling, 3-D textures, digital photography, and large meshes and GPU programming. "Microsoft Research openly and actively collaborates with the academic community, at SIGGRAPH and at countless other conferences and fields of computer science," said Rick Rashid, senior vice president of Microsoft Research. "We are dedicated to working with our colleagues to develop and explore innovative approaches that will push the state of the art forward in computer graphics." Researchers at Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) have a deep history with ACM SIGGRAPH; many of them have dedicated their time on various committees and have been recipients of some of the organization's most prestigious awards. This year, Microsoft senior researcher Hugues Hoppe has been named the recipient of the Computer Graphics Achievement Award for his pioneering work on surface reconstruction, progressive meshes, geometry texturing and geometry images. Hoppe's paper on progressive meshes is one of the most widely cited and influential papers in computer graphics. Mesh parameterization is an essential step in mapping texture images onto surfaces, to greatly enhance their visual detail and quality. Over the past 10 years, Hoppe has been a visible and prolific researcher. He has worked at Microsoft Research for his entire professional career. Several of his papers are considered milestones that have significantly influenced the computer graphics field. Hoppe is the eighth researcher at Microsoft to have earned this award since its inception in 1983; a ninth recipient, industry veteran Kurt Akeley, is joining the lab this fall. Akeley, co-founder of Silicon Graphics Inc., has decided to join Microsoft Research to continue his passion for research in the computer graphics field. Akeley has been a leading contributor over the years, garnering many awards and recognitions for his contributions to the architecture, design and realization of high-performance 3-D graphics hardware systems including GTX, VGX, OpenGL and RealityEngine. Paper presentations run Aug. 8-12 at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles. Below is a sampling: -- "High-Quality Video View Interpolation Using a Layered Representation Video-Based Rendering." A new algorithm that automatically extracts accurate geometry information can enable a user to do special visual effects, such as the "Matrix" freeze-frame effect, right on the desktop -- relatively cheaply and on demand. Session: Video-Based Rendering, Wednesday, Aug. 11, 10:30 a.m.-12:15 p.m. -- "Shell Texture Functions." This technique greatly reduces the amount of runtime processing by modeling an object from a small surface sample whose light-scattering properties have been previously simulated and stored. Through synthesis of the properties of this surface sample over an object core, complex objects can be vividly rendered hundreds of times faster than before. Session: 3-D Texture, Monday, Aug. 9, 10:30 a.m.-12:15 p.m.