Wojciech Jarosz received his PhD from the University of California San Diego (UCSD) in 2008, under the supervision of Henrik Wann Jensen and Matthias Zwicker. He held post-doctoral positions at UCSD and Disney Research Zurich (DRZ), before assuming his current post as a research scientist at DRZ.
Jarosz’s dissertation addressed Monte Carlo Methods for Light Transport in Scattering Media. Although this area has been studied intensively for more than twenty years, Jarosz made new contributions in two major approaches to this problem — irradiance caching and photon mapping. In both cases he investigated the theoretical foundations and reformulated the problem, leading to a novel caching method and an elegant photon mapping approach with vastly improved quality and performance.
Jarosz’s expertise in mathematical modeling of natural phenomena, illumination methods, Monte Carlo methods, and sampling have formed the basis of his subsequent contributions. In his continued work on scattering, he generalized volumetric photon mapping using photon beams and leveraged his new representation to improve both progressive photon mapping and many-light rendering. This work further pushed the boundaries of accurate and efficient lighting simulation in heterogeneous and anisotropically scattering media.
Beyond his development of high performance rendering techniques for participating media, Jarosz’s outstanding contributions extend to developing the theoretical foundations for rendering. In particular, his recent work on the Theory and Analysis of 2D Global Illumination stands out. Previous attempts to extend and improve illumination methods through elaborate analysis were defeated by the complexity of three dimensions. Jarosz’s 2D analysis provided new theoretical insights and resulted in an improved principled error metric for use in 3D irradiance caching. This work raises the level of sophistication of our field and points the way to possible new innovations.
Jarosz’s contributions also extend beyond rendering. He has applied his rendering expertise to fabricating real world objects with carefully prescribed light-material interactions, including objects which can refract light into a prescribed caustic, project distinct color images from different angles, and optically unscramble randomized images and animations. This work continues to bridge the gap between computer graphics and the physical world.
Eurographics is pleased to recognize Wojciech Jarosz with the 2013 Young Researcher Award.