During EUROGRAPHICS 2017 the Fellows of the Association made a proposal to the Executive Committee that three new Fellows be elected. The proposal was accepted and the names of the new Fellows were announced at the General Assembly. The new Fellows are Ming C. Lin, Oliver Staadt, and Jiří Žara. The contributions which they have made to computer graphics and to EUROGRAPHICS are outlined below together with the reasons for their nomination. Congratulations to all three!
MING C. LIN
Ming C. Lin is the John R. & Louise S. Parker Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill. She is also an honorary Visiting Chair Professor (Yangtze Scholar) at Tsinghua University in China. She received her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. She received many honors and awards, including UNC Hettleman Award, IEEE VGTC Virtual Reality Technical Achievement Award in 2010, and 10 best paper awards at international conferences. She is a Fellow of ACM and IEEE.
Her research interests include physically-based modeling, virtual environments, sound rendering, haptics, robotics, and geometric computing. She has (co-)authored nearly 300 refereed publications and co-edited/authored four books. She was Editor in Chief of IEEE TVCG and serves on the Editorial Boards of several other Journals, including Computers and Graphics. She has served on hundreds of program committees of leading ACM/Eurographics/IEEE conferences/Symposia and co-chaired dozens of international conferences and workshops including SCA 2003, Eurographics Tutorials/Courses 2005, EGVE 2006, EGNP 2009, PG 2011, Eurographics 2016, among others.
Ming Lin was elected as a Fellow of the Eurographics Association in recognition of
1. Her outstanding research contributions in physically-based modeling, virtual environments, sound rendering, haptics and animation, many presented at Eurographics events,
2. Her long, continued and remarkable service to the Eurographics Community, including her leadership of key Conferences and Symposia.
JIŘÍ ŽARA
Jiří Žára is a full professor of computer graphics and the Head of the Department of Computer Graphics and Interaction at the Czech Technical University in Prague. He received his Ph.D. degree in 1986 at the same institution for his thesis on hierarchical geometrical models. The research activities of Jiří Žára range from ray tracing in his early stage of his carrier to animations, virtual worlds, and virtual and augmented reality in recent years.
Since the early nineties, he is the Head of the Computer Graphics Group at the Czech Technical University in Prague, where he created a unique, stimulating and exciting environment for pursuing graphics research. He stands behind a broad curriculum of computer graphics courses taught at his university. His students became well-known experts in the graphics community and they achieved permanent positions at universities and research labs in Europe and the United States. Jiří thus greatly contributed to the development of Central European graphics community and its visibility all over the world. He has been constantly active in the popularization of computer graphics in his country. He co-authored a book entitled Moderní počítačová grafika (Contemporary Computer Graphics) that still serves as the main reference to the field at Czech universities. His recent activities focus on popularizing augmented and virtual reality technologies in the national media. Aside from his research activities he spent significant effort in the standardization of early graphics standards (VRML97, MPEG-4, and X3D) by taking part in the ISO standardization committees.
Jiří was elected as a Fellow of the Association in recognition of his outstanding contributions and leadership in computer graphics research. Jiří regularly serves as a program committee member of numerous graphics conferences, and was a co-chair of the Eurographics 2007 conference.
OLIVER STAADT
Oliver Staadt is a Full Professor of Computer Science and Chair in Visual Computing in the Institute of Computer Science at the University of Rostock. He received his Dipl.-Inf. degree from TU Darmstadt and Dr. sc. techn. degree, both in Computer Science, from ETH Zurich. Subsequently, as a post-doc at the ETH Zurich Computer Graphics Lab, he was a member of the blue-c project, the first fully functional, bi-directional telepresence environment. From 2002 to 2007, he was an Assistant Professor and founding director of the Virtual Rality Lab at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis). In 2007, he joined the University of Rostock, where he established the Visual Computing Lab. Oliver Staadt is a member of Eurographics, ACM, ACM SIGGRAPH, IEEE Computer Society, and the German Informatics Society (GI). Since 2013, he is serving as chairman of the special interest group on virtual and augmented realty of GI. He has published over 100 papers on theoretical methods, systems, and applications of Computer Graphics, Visualization, Virtual and Augmented Reality, Telepresence, and Visual Computing (including Eurographics, Computer Graphics Forum, SIGGRAPH, IEEE TVCG, IEEE Virtual Reality, EGVE, and IEEE Visualization). As a Eurographics member since 2002, he was serving as Eurographics STAR Co-Chair 2015, Papers Co-Chair of the International Conference on Artificial Reality and Telexistence and Eurographics Symposium on Virtual Environments (ICAT-EGVE) 2014, the Joint Virtual Reality Conference of Eurographics Symposium on Virtual Environments and EuroVR (JVRC) 2013, and the Eurographics/IEEE Symposium on Point-Based Graphics 2008, as well as Tutorial Co-Chair of Eurographics 2000. He is currently Papers Co-Chair of ACM VRST 2017. In addition, he is serving as Associate Editor and Editorial Board member for several journals (Elsevier Computers & Graphics, Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds, Frontiers in AI and Robotics) and has served as IPC and conference organizing committee member for numerous conferences (incl. Eurographics, EGVE, EGPGV, IEEE VR, 3DPVT, ACM VRCAI), He received Best Paper Awards from Eurographics ICAT-EGVE (2016), VARE (2015), GRAPP (2015), and ACM VRCAI (2004).
Oliver Staadt was elected as a Fellow of the Eurographics Association in recognition of
1. outstanding research contributions in the area of virtual and augmented reality and telepresence;
2. continuous service to the Eurographics community as papers co-chair of EGVE and EG/IEEE PBG conferences and as an IPC members of numerous Eurographics conferences and workshops.
