Come 2 to 5 November 2015, the international computer graphics and interactive techniques community will converge in the vibrant and eclectic city of Kobe in Japan for SIGGRAPH Asia 2015. Taking place at the Kobe Convention Center, the eighth edition of the highly anticipated ACM SIGGRAPH Conference and Exhibition in Asia will once again bring together the top names in graphics, animation, art and technology.
Building on its strong tradition of providing attendees with exciting first-hand views of the latest innovations in computer graphics and interactive techniques, SIGGRAPH Asia 2015 is set to draw more than 7,000 participants from more than 50 countries. Computer graphics has constantly been at the forefront of technology development, making significant impact across the industry by changing the way we think, work, and live. SIGGRAPH Asia has been able to reinvent itself each year, much like its host city, Kobe. This year, Kobe was strategically chosen as the venue for SIGGRAPH Asia to help further grow and foster strong connections to important communities in Asia.
New sessions at this year’s edition
This year’s edition of SIGGRAPH Asia will also introduce two new programs for the first-time ever – the Symposium on Education and the Symposium on Visualization in High Performance Computing.
The Symposium on Education invites people from both academia and the industry to present innovative research, methods and positions about the teaching and integration of computer graphics (CG) and interactive techniques in all areas of learning. The Symposium will also provide opportunities for educators and students to learn high-quality pedagogical content, critical thinking and research that push boundaries and expand knowledge within the CG discipline. The keynote speaker for the symposium, Dr. Joaquim Jorge, is an esteemed academic, currently a Professor of Computer Graphics and Multimedia at the Departamento de Engenharia Informática do Instituto Superior Técnico da Universidade de Lisboa in Lisbon, Portugal, as well as a Scientific Coordinator of the Research Group on Visualization and Multimodal Interfaces of the Institute for Computer and Systems Engineering INESC-ID. Dr. Jorge’s keynote, Game Over? New Approaches to Teaching Engineering Courses, will cover gamification and how it can provide for smarter learning by catering to students with different profiles.
The highly anticipated Symposium on Visualization in High Performance Computing, organized for the very first time since SIGGRAPH Asia’s first edition in 2008, aims to cover the development, technology and demonstration of visualization techniques and their interactive applications. Leading the Keynote at the Symposium will be Kwan-Liu Ma, a professor of computer science and the chair of the Graduate Group in Computer Science (GGCS) at the University of California-Davis, where he directs VIDI Labs and UC Davis Center of Excellence for Visualization. Joining him is Hirofumi Seo, CEO & President at SCIEMENT, Inc., 3D designer and SIGGRAPH 2015 Computer Animation Festival award winner, who will be presenting a special session on 3D animation.
A gathering of esteemed innovators
True to its aim to inspire further innovations and promote stimulating discussions, SIGGRAPH Asia 2015 will offer participants the opportunity to meet and network with an international set of computer graphics and interactive techniques luminaries. Leading the lineup of Keynote speakers is Satoshi Tadokoro, a president at the International Rescue System Institute and a project manager at the Japan Cabinet Office ImPACT project. Tadokoro will be sharing his learnings from the 2011 T?hoku earthquake and tsunami, discussing the use of robotics for disaster response and recovery.
Also, for the first time this year, SIGGRAPH Asia is proud to host seasoned professionals in the industry for a Pioneers’ Panel, in which three industry pioneers from key fields will share reflections from their careers to aspiring researchers. These speakers are:
Takeo Kanade, U.A. and Helen Whitaker Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, who will share his experiences in computer vision and robotics;
Tomoyuki Nishita, Professor Emeritus at The University of Tokyo, who will share his work in computer graphics and animation;
Steven Feiner, Professor at Columbia University and CHI Academy Member, who will discuss some of his work in human-computer interaction and virtual/augmented reality
Kanade, Nishita and Feiner are also seasoned SIGGRAPH Asia participants, having participated in previous editions. The panelists’ advice will range from the expected (How to identify life-changing career opportunities? How to select great research questions?) to the unexpected (How to deal with the intricacies of academia, including organizational politics and malicious competitors?).
Yoshifumi Kitamura, the Conference Chair for SIGGRAPH Asia 2015, believes that this year’s edition will provide a completely different experience to participants – whether new or returning. “The theme for this year’s edition of SIGGRAPH Asia is a combination of revolutionary and evolutionary – the balance and harmony between disruptive innovation and the growth of the creation of new technologies. We received an overwhelming number of submissions this year, well beyond our expectations for each of the programs. I believe attendees to this year’s edition of SIGGRAPH Asia can expect to see and experience variety of exciting and high quality content and stand to benefit from the infinite possibilities and opportunities to learn and discover something new and different each day of the event.”