January 21, 2010
Etc.: Campus news & notes
AND THE OSCAR GOES TO… Two UW Computer Science & Engineering alumni will head to Hollywood on Feb. 20 for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ annual Scientific and Technical Awards Presentation. Unlike the other Oscars, the technical achievements being honored do not have to have been developed or used in the previous year, but must have made “significant, outstanding and lasting” contributions to motion pictures.
Brett Allen, who earned his doctorate in 2005 advised by Brian Curless and Zoran Popovic, was part of a four-man team at San Francisco’s Industrial Light and Magic that won for the development of the Imocap, a way for capturing actors’ movements to create realistic computer-animated characters. Imocap uses sensor-studded suits and custom software to allow performance capture on movie sets, rather than in motion-capture studios. The system generated Davy Jones and other human-crustacean hybrids in the movie Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.
Per Christensen, who earned both a master’s and a doctorate, advised by David Salesin and former UW faculty member Tony DeRose of Pixar’s Seattle office is one of two people honored for developing a faster and more realistic way to create shading for complex scenes. The technique is incorporated in Pixar’s RenderMan software, used in dozens of movies ranging from Terminator II to WALL-E.
Both are former members of the UW’s Graphics and Imaging Laboratory.
CITED STUDENT: A law review article written by UW School of Law student Blythe Chandler was recently cited by the Washington Court of Appeals in State v. Scherner. “It is actually quite rare for law school faculty to be cited by courts, let alone a student,” said Associate Dean and Law Professor Peter Nicolas.
In State of Washington v. Scherner, appellant Roger Scherner argued that his child molestation convictions were unconstitutional. The Washington Court of Appeals disagreed, upholding the lower court’s conviction of Scherner. The court cited Chandler’s article, Balancing Interests Under Washington’s Statute Governing the Admissibility of Extraneous Sex-Offense Evidence published in the May 2009 issue of the Washington Law Review, in regards to Scherner’s constitutional challenge to a recently-adopted Washington statute concerning the admissibility of evidence in sex offense cases.
Chandler is a 2002 Vassar College graduate with a degree in Classics. Prior to attending law school, she worked for nearly five years at NARAL Pro-Choice Washington, a reproductive rights advocacy organization.
