Rob Cook, Vice President of Research and Development at Pixar, will be speaking at UCF March 23rd.

Rob Cook:
Rob Cook has a B.S. in Physics from Duke University and an M.S. in Computer Graphics from Cornell University. At Cornell, he and Ken Torrance developed a physically based model of light-surface interaction that could realistically simulate color and shading; prior to this work, computer-generated images had been limited to a distinctly plastic look. In 1981, he joined Lucasfilm / Pixar where he extended this work and developed the first programmable shader for simulating complex surface appearances.

He was the first to apply Monte Carlo techniques to rendering. Together with colleagues at Lucasfilm, he solved several of the thorniest long-standing problems in computer graphics: antialiasing point sampling and ray-tracing, simulating camera effects such as motion blur and depth of field, and rendering soft shadows, glossy reflections and translucency. Motion blur and depth of field proved particularly important in the special effects industry, because they allow computer-generated imagery to match the live-action footage with which they are combined. In 1987, he received the ACM Siggraph Achievement Award in recognition of these contributions. 

Rob was the co-architect and primary author of Pixar's RenderMan software, which is acknowledged as the industry standard for photo-realistic rendering. Of the last 35 films nominated for Visual Effects Oscars, 33 have used RenderMan. In 2001 he and two colleagues received the first Oscar ever given for software. He is currently the Vice President of Research and Development at Pixar.