Courant’s Ken Perlin Recognized for Innovations in Computer Graphics

By James Devitt

Ken Perlin, a professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, has been recognized by the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques (ACM SIGGRAPH) for his “broad contributions and impact across computer graphics,” the organization announced.
    The founding director of NYU’s Media Research Lab, Perlin has produced a variety of innovations in rendering, modeling, animation, and user interfaces, and has inspired several new lines of research. Most recently, Perlin and Ilya Rosen¬berg, a doctoral student, have developed the UnMousePad, in which users forego the mouse and simply navigate a computer by touching a mouse pad. The lab has also recently unveiled the iBird, a “bird flight simulator” that gives one the sensation of flying through a virtual world.
    Perlin has also developed computer-generated characters that can react with facial expressions and body language, but without using repetitive, pre-built animations, thereby enhancing the realistic nature of their responses. The technology helps children with affective disorders learn to recognize emotional facial expressions. However, it is also used in Vivendi’s “Half Life 2” game, released in 2004. Specifically, Perlin turns research on human behavior into increasingly realistic computer characters.
    Before to coming to NYU, Perlin was an animation architect at Mathematical Appli¬cations Group, Inc., where he worked on the 1982 motion picture Tron, which introduced film goers to landmark film graphics. In 1997, he won an Academy Award for Technical Achievement from the Aca¬demy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his widely used procedural texturing techniques. In recent years, Perlin has been developing innovative game-based ap¬proaches to science education for school-aged children.

Perlin shares his inventions through his site, “The Web as a Procedural Sketchbook”