Markus GROSS

Professor at ETH
Director of Disney Research Zurich
Zurich, Switzerland

Markus Gross is a Professor of Computer Science at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH), head of the Computer Graphics Laboratory, and the Director of Disney Research, Zurich. He joined the ETH Computer Science faculty in 1994. His research interests include physically based modeling,computer animation, immersive displays, and video technology. Before joining Disney, Markus was director of the Institute of Computational Sciences at ETH. He received a master of science in electrical and computer engineering and a PhD in computer graphics and image analysis, both from Saarland University in Germany in 1986 and 1989. Markus serves on the boards of numerous international research institutes, societies, and governmental organizations. He received the Technical Achievement Award from EUROGRAPHICS in 2010 and the Swiss ICT Champions Award in 2011. He is a fellow of the EUROGRAPHICS Association and a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. Prior to his involvement in Disney Research he cofounded Cyfex AG, Novodex AG, LiberoVision AG, and Dybuster AG.

David J. KASIK

Senior Technical Fellow
BOEING USA

Dave Kasik is Boeing's Senior Technical Fellow in visualization and interactive techniques. He is pursuing new ways of using visualization for huge amounts of both geometric and non-geometric data. His work with geometric data has made Dave a pioneer in interactive 3D computer graphics. He devoted his first 11 years at Boeing to research and development of computer-aided design software. These projects led to pioneering work in interactive 3D graphics, user interface management systems, and industrial use of non-uniform rational (NURBS) solids and surfaces. Dave has worked to make 3D geometry available to the entire Boeing user community. Examples include:

• IVT/Superviewer lets users see an entire virtual Boeing aerospace product without using special hardware.
• Low-end visualization gives users access to 3D engineering drawings, parts lists, training material, etc. Much of this content is delivered via the Web.
• Thin client makes high performance computers available to remote users.

Dave is pioneering the use of visual analytics to help extract more information from complex non-geometric data. Visual analytics supplements more traditional analytic techniques (like statistics and data mining) with a human's ability to use vision to find anomalies and detect trends. Emerging visual analytics tools are being explored in areas as diverse as safety and marketing.
He earned his Masters in Computer Science from the University of Colorado in 1972 and a Bachelors in Quantitative Studies from the Johns Hopkins University in 1970. He participates in numerous professional organizations, including ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), which named Dave a Distinguished Scientist in 2007; ACM SIGGRAPH, where he runs the annual Pioneers student mentoring program; and IEEE, where he is a member of the IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications editorial board.