Graphics Keynote: Dr. Alla Sheffer, University of British Columbia
Human-Centered Geometry Processing
Time and Location: TBD
Abstract:
Bio: Alla Sheffer is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia and a Scholar at Amazon Inc. She received her BSc (1991), MSc (1995), and PhD (2000) from Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. She investigates algorithms for geometry processing, focusing on fabrication and computer graphics applications. She is particularly interested in leveraging connections between geometry and perception to enable users to create and manipulate geometric content, including garments and 3D printable artifacts. Prof. Sheffer regularly publishes at selective computer graphics venues and has co-authored 52 papers published in ACM Transactions on Graphics, including numerous papers in SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia proceedings. She holds 6 recent patents on methods for garment grading, sketch analysis, and hexahedral mesh generation. Sheffer is a Fellow of IEEE, a Fellow of ACM, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Fellow of Eurographics, and a Member of the SIGGRAPH Academy. She is the recipient of the 2018 Canadian Human-Computer Communications Society Achievement Award. She was the Technical Papers Committee Chair for SIGGRAPH’23 and co-chaired the program committees for Eurographics’18, 3DV’18, PG’19, SGP’06 and IEEE SMI’13. She has served on the editorial boards of ACM TOG, IEEE TVCG, Computer Graphics Forum, Graphical Models, Computers & Graphics, and CAGD.
HCI Keynote: Dr. Daniel Vogel, University of Waterloo
Time and Location: TBD
Abstract:
Daniel Vogel is an Associate Professor in the Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo. He has published more than 100 papers in the area of Human Computer Interaction focusing on fundamental characteristics of human input and novel forms of interaction for current and future computing form factors. Topics include touch, tangibles, mid-air gestures, and whole-body input, for everything from on-body wearable devices and mobile phones, to large displays and mixed reality. In addition to earning a PhD from the University of Toronto, Dan holds a BFA from the Emily Carr University of Art + Design, and he leverages his combined art and science background in his research. For example, he was awarded a major grant to build a $1.8 million facility to explore the intersection of HCI and Fine Art in spatial augmented reality. His 2004 paper on interactive ambient displays is one of the ten most cited papers in the history of the ACM UIST conference, and he has received multiple honours including: 12 paper awards at ACM CHI; the Bill Buxton Dissertation Award (2010); a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship (2011 – 2013), an Ontario Early Researcher Award (2017); the Faculty of Mathematics Golden Jubilee Research Excellence Award (2018); a CS-Can/Info-Can Outstanding Young Computer Science Researcher Award (2019); and was named a Cheriton Faculty Fellow (2019 – 2022) and ACM Distinguished Member (2023).
50th Anniversary Plenary: Dr. Kellogg Booth, University of British Columbia (Emeritus Professor)
Reflections on the role of Graphics Interface in fostering Canadian graphics, visualization, and human-computer interaction
Time and Location: TBD
Abstract: Graphics Interface prides itself on being the longest-running conference in the field, pre-dating all of the current conferences on computer graphics, visualization & human-computer interaction. Uniquely Canadian, the conference began as a forum for industry, government, and academic researchers and practitioners in the Canadian scientific and engineering community to exchange information about interactive computer graphics applications and techniques. The conference quickly attracted an international audience and established its reputation as an important publication venue for leading-edge papers and high-quality reviewing. It continues to play an important role in linking researchers across Canada in the highly interconnected fields of graphics, visualization & human-computer interaction — especially Canadian students and early career researchers. As the 50th conference in the series takes place, we can reflect on the forces that helped shape the community and the conference and celebrate some of the people who provided their leadership and wisdom, especially in the early years, to sustain and nurture the conference over more than five decades.
Bio: After growing up (to the extent he ever did) in California, attending Caltech (BS 1968 in mathematics), and then doing graduate work at UC Berkeley (MA 1970 and PhD 1975 in computer science) while working in computer graphics at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Kellogg Booth joined the University of Waterloo in 1977 as a faculty member in the Department of Computer Science, where he co-founded the Computer Graphics Laboratory and engaged in a variety of research projects focused on interactive graphics. In 1990 he moved to The University of British Columbia to join the Imager Laboratory for Computer Graphics, Human-Centred Technologies & Visualization where he was the founding director of the Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre. His initial involvement with Graphics Interface was in 1981, when he was local arrangements co-chair for the Seventh Canadian Man-Computer Communications Conference and a member of the program committee. He attended almost all of the subsequent conferences starting the following year when the conference was renamed Graphics Interface and became an annual event rather than biannual. He served as program co-chair in 1997, general co-chair in1992 (Vancouver), and general chair in 2005 (Victoria), and on the program committee in various years. He was president of the Canadian Human-Computer Communications Society from 2002-2008, past president from 2008-2014, and a member or chair of the awards committee off and on for many years. He retired in 2017.
