New EUROGRAPHICS Fellows
During EUROGRAPHICS 2007 the Fellows of the Association made a proposal to the Executive Committee that new Fellows be elected. The proposal was accepted and the names of the new Fellow were announced at the General Assembly. The new Fellows are George Drettakis and Carol O’Sullivan. The contributions which they have made to computer graphics and to EUROGRAPHICS are outlined below together with the reasons for their nomination. Congratulations to them both!
George Drettakis
Drettakis is a senior researcher at INRIA and the group leader of the REVES research group at INRIA Sophia-Antipolis. His research interests are in rendering for computer graphics. His recent work is on perceptual rendering, and in particular audio-visual cross-modal rendering, interactive illumination, shadows, relighting, reconstruction from images and interactive rendering in general. Since 2005 he has been a member of the Scientific and Technological Orientation Council (COST) of INRIA where he is in charge of the International Relations working group.
Drettakis received his Ptychion (B.Sc. equivalent) in 1988 from the Dept. of Computer Science in Crete, Greece. As an undergraduate he worked at the ICS/FORTH on European Community research programs. He then completed his M.Sc. (in 1990) and Ph.D., (Jan 1994) at the Dept. of C.S. at the University of Toronto, Canada, under the supervision of Eugene Fiume in computer graphics.
He was an ERCIM postdoctoral fellow in ’94-’95. The first part of this was at iMAGIS in Grenoble, France. The second part was in Barcelona, Spain at the UPC/LiSi graphics group and the last part was at VMSD-GMD in Germany. He was a permanent researcher (chargé de recherche INRIA) at iMAGIS-GRAVIR/IMAG- INRIA in Grenoble from Oct. 95 to Jul. 2000. While at iMAGIS, he obtained the degree of “Habilitation à Diriger les Recherches” at the University of Grenoble, in 1999. In July 2000 he moved to INRIA Sophia-Antipolis, where he set up a new research group. REVES was created as a tentative group (“Action”) in May 2001 and he then became group leader. REVES became an official INRIA project (research group) in the summer of 2002. He became an INRIA Senior Researcher (“Directeur de Recherche”) in October 2003.
Drettakis has worked extensively in lighting, shadows and global illumination research, and pioneered the development of rendering algorithms for augmented and virtual reality. He has also developed a vision for interactive virtual environments using tools such as non-photorealistic rendering, sketching and sound processing.
Within Eurographics he is co-charing the Programme Committee for Eurographics Conference 2008, in Crete, with Roberto Scopigno. He also co-chaired Eurographics Conference 2002 with Hans-Peter Seidel, and the Eurographics Workshop on Rendering 1998 with Nelson Max. He has served on the Eurographics Workshop on Rendering programme committee (now the Symposium) since 1995, and on many other program committees, including Eurographics 04 and 07 and SIGGRAPH 99, 05 & 06.
George Drettakis was elected to a Fellowship of the Association in recognition of:
- his excellent research contributions to computer graphics;
- his chairmanship of Eurographics events and his contributions to the rendering symposium;
- his standing as a world class graphics researcher.
Carol O’Sullivan
Carol O’Sullivan is an Associate Professor at Trinity College Dublin and head of the Graphics Vision and Visualisation group (GV2) at the School of Computer Science and Statistics. GV2 was formed in 2006 with the integration of two longstanding TCD research groups: the Image Synthesis Group [ISG], established in 1993, and the Computer Vision and Robotics Group [CVRG], which was established 1983. The GV2 is an internationally active group dedicated to carrying out leading edge research in computer graphics, computer vision and all aspects of visual computing. Before that, she was head of the Image Synthesis Group from 1999 to 2006, where she has managed a range of projects with significant budgets and successfully supervised many researchers.
Carol completed a Bachelor at Trinity College in 1988 and graduated after several years of industry work (three of them in Germany) with the Master degree at Dublin City University in 1996. She has been at Trinity College since 1997, starting as a University Lecturer, and she now holds an Associate Professor position. Carol completed her PhD at TCD in 1999 on “Perceptually-Adaptive Collision Detection for Computer Graphics”, an in 2003 she was elected Fellow of Trinity College Dublin.
Her research interests include perception, eye movements, virtual humans, crowds, and physically-based animation. She has been a member of many IPCs, including the Eurographics and SIGGRAPH papers committee, and has published over 90 peer-reviewed papers, among which is the first paper on merging meshes and impostors. She has organised and co-chaired several conferences and workshops, including a brilliant Eurographics’05 in Dublin, the SIGGRAPH/EG Symposium on Computer Animation 2006 and the SIGGRAPH/EG Campfire on Perceptually Adaptive Graphics 2001. Eurographics’05 was especially remarkable, largely driven by Carol’s enthusiasm and creativity. She is also a Steering Committee member of the Eurographics/ACM Symposium on Computer Animation (SCA) since 2002.
Carol O’Sullivan is a member of Eurographics since 1999, and Chair of the Eurographics Irish Chapter from its beginning in 2001. In 2004 she was co-opted and in 2006 she was elected into the Eurographics Executive Committee where she serves as Chair of the Promotions Board.
Carol O’Sullivan was elected to a Fellowship of the Association in recognition of:
- her research contributions to computer graphics in perception, virtual humans, crowds, and physically-based animation;
- her contribution to the development of the Symposium on Computer Animation (SCA);
- her contribution to the organization of scientific events.