Campus Digest

Disney Research Lab Director speaks on technological innovation in the entertainment industry

04 Mar 2016

Professor Markus Gross (right) describes how creative scientists use technologies to tell great stories Professor Markus Gross (right) describes how creative scientists use technologies to tell great stories
Professor Markus Gross (right) describes how creative scientists use technologies to tell great stories

 

The Department of Computer Science and the Academy of Film of the School of Communication invited Professor Markus Gross, Professor of Computer Science of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich and Vice President of Research and Development of The Walt Disney Company, to speak at HKBU’s 60th Anniversary Shun Hing Distinguished Lecture Series on 17 February 2016.

 

The lecture by Professor Gross, entitled “Technological Innovation for Entertainment”, was attended by more than 270 faculty members, university and secondary school students, scientists from the information technology industry as well as the general public.

 

Professor Gross shared how scientists in Disney Research apply technological innovation and theories to enable the best story-telling approach in the creative industry. He demonstrated the use of new technologies in some celebrated productions, for instance, the application of the “high-quality capture of eyes” technology in the film Star Wars.
 

 

The research contribution of Professor Gross in physically based modeling, computer animation, immersive displays and video technology, has made him the awardee of Technical Achievement Award from Eurographics in 2010, the Swiss ICT Champions Award in 2011 and the IEEE Visualization Technical Achievement Award in 2015. In 2013 he received a Technical Achievement Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Konrad Zuse Medal of GI and the Karl Heinz Beckurts prize.

 

The lecture was sponsored by Shun Hing Education and Charity Fund.