Academy-Award Winning Pixar Scientist to Speak at UMaine March 20
The University of Maine College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the 2015 Maine Science Festival will present a public talk by an Academy-Award winning computer scientist from Pixar Animation Studios on March 20.
Tony DeRose, a senior scientist and lead of the Research Group at Pixar, will give the free public talk, “Recent Research at Pixar,” 3:10 p.m. in Bennett Hall, Room 137 on the UMaine campus. DeRose will speak about how the computer animation film studio views research and problems, and how scientists interact with production. He will also highlight a few recent research projects at Pixar.
While at UMaine, DeRose will meet with university students, faculty and staff; hear research presentations; tour several research facilities; and take part in a roundtable discussion on how the university can build collaborations in art, science, technology and engineering.
For more information about DeRose’s public talk or to request a disability accommodation, contact Claire Sullivan at 581.1924 or claires@maine.edu.
DeRose received his bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of California, Davis, and has a doctorate in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley. He was a computer science and engineering professor at the University of Washington from 1986 to 1995. In 1998, he contributed to the Academy-Award winning short film “Geri’s Game.” He also received the ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award in 1999 and a Scientific and Technical Academy Award in 2006.
The inaugural Maine Science Festival is set for March 20–22 at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor. The event aims to teach participants of all ages about science while bringing them together with Maine’s science and technology experts, including UMaine. DeRose is the festival’s headliner and is scheduled to make the keynote address at 7:30 p.m. March 21.
More about the Maine Science Festival is online.