Yahya H. Mirza is the founder of Aurora Borealis Software LLC and has spent the last 16 years with a single-minded focus of researching technology that can enable creativity, with the end goal of using it to pursue his own ideas. Yahya's original background was aeronautical engineering and was initially employed by Battelle Labs in Columbus Ohio. Yahya's original passion was aircraft that could fly into space using hypersonic SCRAMjet propulsion. This passion for creative design led him to explore the usage of CFD as a design tool first on SGI workstations at the Ohio Supercomputer Center and then on a Cray YMP at NASA Ames in 1989. After being thoroughly frustrated by the lack of exploratory design tools, in 1991 Yahya entered the software industry to leverage object-oriented software technology to more quickly model his own aircraft design concepts. In 1993, this early inspiration led to a collaborative relationship with an aircraft design group at WPAFB to explore ideas for an aircraft modeling and design environment based on an object-oriented modeling language and distributed supercomputing. In 1994 Yahya got his first big break by winning a contract with Spatial Technologies to do some early research on the componentization of the ACIS geometry kernel utilizing Microsoft's component software technology COM. In 1995, after working on a COM related project through his company at Microsoft, Yahya attended Siggraph for the first time and saw Pixar's unveiling of Toy Story. Recognizing the vast number of similarities between conceptual aircraft design and the production of animated feature film, and their shared utilization of high performance computing, physical simulation, and modeling languages, Yahya spent three years as a visiting researcher in the UIUC Smalltalk Research Group searching for a more flexible dynamic object oriented host language. The objective was to find a more exploratory host language to serve as the basis of a highly dynamic component based modeling language.

In 2001, Yahya returned to Seattle and briefly worked through his company in one of the first five teams at Microsoft (Web Objects and Messaging) to use the .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR). The possibility of using the CLR to serve as the basis for his modeling language work, Yahya set off to learn the internals of the CLR. In 2002, frustrated by Siggraph, OOPSLA, and other research conferences, catering largely to academics, and commercial conferences marketing specific technologies, Yahya created his own workshops motivated by his interest in utilizing applied research in dynamic languages, and their virtual machine implementations for computer animation. In 2003, after five continuous Siggraphs of passionately describing his work to several patient Pixar employees, Yahya was invited by the General Manager of the Pixar RenderMan team, to research GPU compiler technology for the RenderMan Shading Language. Through his Language Runtime (LaR) workshops, Yahya has had the pleasure of interacting with several really creative individuals who have made a deep impact in the computing industry, and have inspired him greatly. For the past three years, through his workshops, Yahya has been intensely researching parallel programming models, and a range of multi-core architectures including the CELL. Yahya's driving vision for many years has been to leverage these dis-joint and separate technologies to enable a real-time interactive feature film. As an incremental step, Yahya is currently working on a new distributed programming model to explicitly leverage large-scale clusters built from emerging multi-core processors.

Yahya doesn't like .com's and is proud of the fact that in 1995 he told one of the largest VCs in the silicon valley they can go where the sun don't shine. Consequently Yahya continues to be the poorest entrepreneur in the industry and has occasionally resorted to performing his original guitar and piano music at restaurants, coffee shops and museums in the Seattle area as a way to fund his work until he makes it in the emerging interactive feature film industry. The Interactive Cinema Symposium 2006 (ICS-06) and its panels are Yahya's attempt to build awareness of the artistic and technical issues, required to create an interactive feature film.

Habib Zargarpour stumbled into 3D graphics in 1990 while designing for a film and considers computer graphics to be "the perfect mix" of the technical and artistic worlds. He received his B.A.S.C. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and went on to graduate with distinction in Industrial Design from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena in 1992. After working as a graphic artist and fine arts illustrator, Habib joined Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) as a technical director on The Mask. He went on to earn many credits as an Associate Visual Effects Supervisor while at ILM, most recently for The Perfect Storm. Habib is currently a Senior Art Director at EA and has most recently worked on EA's Need for Speed Most Wanted. Habib still likes to paint with real brushes once in a while to maintain his sanity.

Habib's film credits include:

• 2002: MelBotWars, virtual fighting robots uses dynamic rigid body simulation in Maya. It was designed and developed by Habib Zargarpour for Industrial Light & Magic.
• 2000: The Perfect Storm - Associate Visual Effects Supervisor, Recipient of the British Academy Award - Best Achievement in Visual Effects, Nominee for Academy Award - Best Achievement in Visual Effects
• 1999: Star Wars: Episode I "The Phantom Menace" - Computer Graphics Supervisor
• 1997: Spawn - Associate Visual Effects Supervisor
• 1996: Star Trek -First Contact - Computer Graphics Supervisor
• 1996: Twister - Digital Tornado Designer/Computer Graphics Supervisor, Recipient of the British Academy Award - Best Achievement in Visual Effects, Nominee for Academy Award - Best Achievement in Visual Effects
• 1995: Jumanji - Computer Graphics Sequence Supervisor
• 1994: Star Trek: Generations - Senior Technical Director
• 1993: The Mask - Technical Director

After finishing his university in Hungary, Attila spent 5 years in Japan, where he worked for CSK and SEGA. In 1996 he left for Canada, where he worked for Alias|Wavefront on PowerAnimator 8.0 and Maya1.0. When SCEI US R&D was founded in 1998, Attila came to the US as one of the founding engineers of this new group. His work was shown at different press events and includes simulations, rendering and parallelization solutions. He is now Sr. Manager of Distributed Systems at Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. US R&D, where he is responsible for the technical directions related to the distributed computational research.

Rudy Poat, is currently a Creative Director at Electronic Arts in Vancouver. As part of the Worldwide visualization team there, he's been innovating many new technology advancements for real-time, and creating new property ideas.

H. Peter Hofstee is Cell BE Chief Scientist and Cell BE Synergistic Processor Chief Architect. He received his PhD from Caltech in 1995 and after teaching at Caltech for 2 years, joined the IBM Austin research laboratory (ARL) in 1996. At the ARL Peter led the logic design for two GHz PowerPC processor prototypes. In 2000 Peter started work on the concept for Cell processor and he has been working on Cell development since then.

Christophe Hery received his degree from Ecole Superieure des Travaux Publics, and has worked at computer graphics companies including BUF and TDI. At Industrial Light and Magic, Christophe is a R&D lead, working on skin research and related rendering issues. In 2003, Christophe was recipient of a Technical Achievement Award for the development of methods for rendering skin using subsurface scattering techniques. He is currently working on a system for creating talking digital clones. Christophe has frequently participated in Siggraph courses, panels and sketches, most recently including the 2001 and 2003 Renderman Courses, the 2004 Crowd Simulation Course and the 2005 Digital Face Cloning Course.

For over twenty years, Barton has blended management skills with experience in production and engineering, including work at Mattel Electronics, Symbolics, Information International Inc, Nichimen Graphics, Dreamworks Feature Animation, as a partner of Anohana Production Management & Technologies, and as owner of Marina Motion, LLC. Education and information sharing has been a strong component of the hands-on managing style he brought to film projects, such as The Prince of Egypt, The King and I(animated), Vertical Limit, Shrek and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius. In a career moving from computer music to computer graphics and animation, Barton has focused on methods for practical use of technology, forming channels of communication between product designers and their users. His relationship with mental images started in 1997, while at Dreamworks, when he was on an Advisory committee for what was to become Softimage|XSI. In 2003, he started the Los Angeles mental ray User Group, and in 2004 became part of the mental images team. With his current focus on mental ray training, user community and shader development, he realizes his goal to empower both individuals and teams working in the development, production and technology of animated filmmaking.

Kim Libreri recently joined Industrial Light & MagicÕs team of award-winning visual effects supervisors. He will spend the next few months learning ILMÕs pipeline and consulting with the R&D team on the ongoing evolution of ILMÕs techniques.

LibreriÕs credits as a visual effects supervisor include The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions and Catwoman. He has worked on the technology side of the industry for more than twelve years. Libreri started his film career as a senior software engineer at the Computer Film Company in London. He later worked at Cinesite Europe as head of technology and was one of the original founders. During the three years Libreri was overseeing technology there, the visual effects for Space Jam, Muppet Treasure Island, Event Horizon, Golden Eye, First Knight and Mission: Impossible were among the projects completed.

At Manex Visual Effects, he led the technology development teams on The Matrix and What Dreams May Come, each of which won Academy Awards for best achievement in visual effects. In 2002, Libreri founded ESC Entertainment, which was set up to produce the visual effects for the Matrix sequels.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honored Libreri with a Technical Achievement Award for the development of a system for image-based rendering allowing choreographed camera movements through computer graphic reconstructed sets.

Libreri has a degree in computer sciences from Manchester University. He worked in various areas of software design, including time with British Aerospace and Advance Music Systems before entering the film business.

ILM Credits (Feature Films):

• 2006 POSEIDON Ð Visual Effects Supervisor
• 2005 WAR OF THE WORLDS Ð Additional Visual Effects Supervisor
• 2005 HERBIE: FULLY LOADED Ð Visual Effects Supervisor

Steven Keele perused a career in illustration for a number of years after graduating from Brigham Young University with a BA in art. After doing traditional 2D layout animation for Smurfs, Thundarr the Barbarian and others and he became interested in 3D.

In 1989 Steve joined Viewpoint Datalabs as their first modeler, over time, he became an expert in building 3D models. Steve loves creating models for games, films, commercials, etc. At Viewpoint Steve worked on many and varying projects, developed modeling techniques, and trained many of the top modelers in Hollywood. Currently Steve is an illustrator, animator, and effects artist for an in house creative services department.

Some of SteveÕs credits include:

Film:

• Dungeons and Dragons (2001)
• Godzilla (1998)
• ANTZ (1998)
• Batman and Robin (1997) (uncredited)
• The Shadow (1995) (uncredited)

Games:

• Mindscape - WarHammer
• AbeÕs Oddysee
• Gauntlet Legends
• Gauntlet Dark Legacy
• Timez Attack Ð Math game for kids

Television (representative sampling):

• Oldsmobile Aurora Commercial - Modeled the robes for the Statue of Liberty.
• Steven KingÕs The Stand - Created heads that morph from man to scarecrow to ram.
• Bruno the Kid - Created the 3D model and morph targets for Bruno.
• Jonny Quest - Lead modeler on the 3D models.

George Bosworth was one of the founders of DigiTalk Smalltalk, one of the early object oriented tool vendors and has been working in compilers tools and object oriented languages for well over 30 years. Upon the merging of DigiTalk and ParcPlace, George served as the CTO of the combined organization. In 1997 George went to Microsoft and was one of the many architects involved in the design of the .NET Common Language Runtime. George's contribution was the metadata system, object model, multi-language bindings, and the first JIT compiler for the CLR. Upon retiring from Microsoft, George has been enjoying his freedom.

Johnny Gibson is a thirteen-year CG veteran who has worked most of the last decade for Digital Domain's Feature VFX Division where he is currently an on-staff CG Supervisor. He has extensive experience in film production and television commercial production. His background includes image processing for orbital remote sensing, programming, rigging, shader writing, lighting and rendering, character animation, effects animation, effects rendering, compositing and technical direction. Johnny's film credits include Titanic, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Matrix: Revolutions, and, most recently, Tim Allen's Zoom. Johnny's background in production problem-solving, procedural texture generation and Houdini procedural animation uniquely qualifies him as a panelist for the Procedural Panel.

Pascal Mueller is PhD candidate and research assistant at the Computer Vision Lab of the ETH Zurich, Switzerland. His main interests lie in the field of computer graphics: procedural and physical modeling, generative design, animation, visual effects production pipelines and computer-aided media art. He developed the CityEngine (featured in two ACM SIGGRAPH publications) and is co-developer of the multimedia engine Decklight (performances at Ars Electronica and Imagina). Pascal Mueller received a master degree in computer science from the ETH Zurich in 2001. For two and a half years, he worked as a freelance consultant at ETH Zurich and as a technical director for the production company Central Pictures, Switzerland.

Ken Perlin is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at New York University, He was founding director of the Media Research Laboratory and also directed the NYU Center for Advanced Technology from 1994-2004. His research interests include graphics, animation, user interfaces, science education and multimedia. In January 2004 he was the featured artist at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 2002 he received the NYC Mayor's award for excellence in Science and Technology and the Sokol award for outstanding Science faculty at NYU. In 1997 he won an Academy Award for Technical Achievement from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his noise and turbulence procedural texturing techniques, which are widely used in feature films and television. In 1991 he received a Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation.

Dr. Perlin received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from New York University in 1986, and a B.A. in theoretical mathematics from Harvard University in 1979. He was Head of Software Development at R/GREENBERG Associates in New York, NY from 1984 through 1987. Prior to that, from 1979 to 1984, he was the System Architect for computer generated animation at Mathematical Applications Group, Inc., Elmsford, NY, where the first feature film he worked on was TRON. He has served on the Board of Directors of the New York chapter of ACM/SIGGRAPH, and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the New York Software Industry Association.

Chris White began his career in visual effects over a decade ago at Industrial Light & Magic. As R&D Technical Director and Sequence Supervisor, he spent the next seven years at ILM creating visual effects and artists tools. His work ranged from creating digital tornados for Twister, crashing podracers and exploding asteroids for the Star Wars prequels, to battling dinosaurs for the Jurassic Park series.

After leaving ILM,he pursued a freelance career. In Chicago, Chris worked on reconstructing architecture and jazz heritage buildings in virtual reality, developed software and techniques for video game companies, and worked as a visual effects supervisor for independent films and commercials.

Chris is currently a Digital Effects Supervisor at Weta Digital in New Zealand. For The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, he worked on look development for such creatures as Shelob, Oliphants, and the Haradim. He completed his work on the film by creating the complex destruction of the Black Gates for the conclusion of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

His recent work consists of the recreation of 1930's New York for Peter Jackson's King Kong. This project, close to two years in the making, started with the creation of the ÒThe BotÓ. Developed in Maya, this software was used to procedurally create over 100,000 3D buildings matching the 1933 skyline. Artists also used the software to create custom buildings and age them with procedural weathering and staining. Along with developing software and techniques for the building, rendering, and look of digital New York, he supervised several sequences of the film.

Drew Hess is a software developer in the R&D department at Industrial Light & Magic. He is currently collaborating with Lucasarts on real-time 3D graphics in both video games and pre-visualization tools. Prior to joining ILM, Drew was a member of the IA-64 architecture team at Intel Corporation.

Rolf Herken is the founder of mental images and the driving force behind its innovative technologies and products as well as its successful establishment as the global leader in core component technology for 3D modeling, collaboration, and visualization. Trained as a theoretical physicist with a strong interest in Theoretical Computer Science, he established the company in 1986 while working on a Ph.D. thesis on computability aspects of quantum gravity. Since then he has been serving as the company's president and director of R&D with primary responsibility for Research, Development, Technology Strategy, and the company's OEM business.

After finishing his university and internship with a Video Studio in Hungary, Gabor went to SEGA in Japan to work on advanced rendering issues, including early VR developments. In 1996 he left for Canada, where he worked for Alias|Wavefront on PowerAnimator 8.0 and Maya 1.0. When SCEI US R&D was founded in 1998, Gabor came to the US as one of the founding engineers of this new group. His rendering work was shown at different press events, most notably on the "duck demos" for SCE. He is now a Sr. Engineer specialized on rendering at Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. US R&D. In his spare time, he is developing his own DCC tool called EQUINOX-3D.

John Bates is a senior software engineer at Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. US R&D. While he was attending the University of Oregon in 2001, SCE hired him to work on the GScube project, but the project ended before John's first day. For the next four years, motivated by Neal Stephenson's Metaverse, John worked on real-time peer-to-peer distributed computing frameworks and applications. Recently, PLAYSTATION¨3 development has led to work on parallel programming models for the Cell processor.