Awards

ACM SIGGRAPH awards exceptional achievements

Each year, ACM SIGGRAPH presents nine awards recognizing exceptional achievements in computer graphics and interactive techniques at the ACM SIGGRAPH Conference. The selection process is the responsibility of seven committees and is supervised by the awards chair.

Awards Committee Chair

Jeff Jortner

Awards Committee
Term: Sept 2023 - Sept 2026
 

Awards

Steven Anson Coons Award

Recognizing outstanding creative contributions to computer graphics honouring an individual’s lifetime contribution.

Computer Graphics Achievement Award

Recognizing outstanding achievement in computer graphics and interactive techniques.

Significant New Researcher Award

Recognizing a recent, significant contribution to the field of computer graphics from a researcher new to the field.

Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award

Recognizing a recent doctoral candidate who has successfully defended and completed their Ph.D. dissertation in computer graphics and interactive techniques.

Outstanding Service Award

Recognizing a career of outstanding service to ACM SIGGRAPH by a volunteer.

Distinguished Artist Award

Recognizing an artist who has created a substantial and important body of work that significantly advances aesthetic content in the field of digital art.

Practitioner Award

Recognizing outstanding contributions to the practice and advancement of Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques.

Distinguished Educator Award

Recognizing outstanding pedagogical contributions to computer graphics and interactive techniques at any educational level or within the context of any discipline.

ACM SIGGRAPH Academy

Honoring a group of individuals who have made substantial contributions to the field of computer graphics and whose efforts have shaped the disciplines and/or industry, and led the research and/or innovation in computer graphics and interactive techniques.

Current Recipients

Steven Anson Coons Award for Outstanding Creative Contributions to Computer Graphics

Marie-Paule Cani

ACM SIGGRAPH is pleased to present Marie Paule Cani with the 2023 Steven Anson Coons Award for her outstanding contributions to computer graphics in shape modeling, computer animation, and content creation tools.

Cani spent the early part of her career pioneering work on the representation, manipulation, and animation of implicit surface representations.  Implicit representations encode 3D shapes as isosurfaces of a real valued function defined over R. Cani was one of the first to popularize and advocate for the use of implicits for computer graphics applications. The power of these representations is increasingly appreciated due to their suitability for machine learning settings.

Cani built upon her modeling work to make several significant contributions in computer animation, including algorithms for modeling contact between smooth volumetric shapes, simulating the behavior of fluids, animating natural phenomena, and creating realistic hair and cloth wrinkles.  In particular, she introduced a new paradigm for robust and coherent simulation of highly deformable substances with particle systems to the Computer Graphics community by extending the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) approach, which she applied to one of the first animations of lava flows.

Cani also conducted pioneering research on intuitive content creation tools and interfaces. She proposed the first sketch-based garment modeling interface, introduced several sculpting-based systems – some for general shapes, others dedicated to specific applications such as sculpting mountain ranges, and developed methods that allow non-experts to model hairstyles and pose characters in a few sketching gestures.

In addition to her significant technical achievements, Cani has an exceptional record of mentoring, leadership, and service. She has served as the SIGGRAPH Technical Papers Chair in 2017, Chair of the Eurographics Association, and a member of the SIGGRAPH Executive Committee. Cani has been a strong advocate for diversity in the graphics research community and has worked tirelessly to mentor numerous junior female researchers and increase the representation of women on bodies such as the SIGGRAPH Technical Papers Program Committee. Her efforts have been instrumental in improving the diversity and inclusivity of the field.

Cani received her PhD at Universite Paris XI in 1990.  She first joined Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, as an Assistant Professor, and later moved to Institut Polytechnique de Grenoble, where she became Associate and then full Professor. She led two joint research groups with Inria, EVASION (2003-2011) and then IMAGINE (2012-2017). In 2014-2015, Cani was appointed as the yearly chair of computer science at the Collège de France, and in 2017, she became a professor of computer science at Ecole Polytechnique, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, France.

Computer Graphics Achievement Award

Wolfgang Heidrich

For fundamental contributions to the development and analysis of computational imaging and display systems.

Significant New Researcher Award

Felix Heide

For novel and impactful research on the hardware and software of computational cameras.

Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award

Cheng Zhang

For a dissertation presenting significant advances in physics-based rendering and providing both practical tools and theoretical foundations for future differentiable rendering algorithms.

Outstanding Service Award

Yong Tsui (YT) Lee

For his service to the computer graphics community in Asia including the founding and nurturing of the SIGGRAPH Asia Conference.

The Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement in Digital Art

Paul Brown

For his pioneering efforts in the fields of computational art, generative systems, and cellular automata.

ACM SIGGRAPH Practitioner Award

Ken Museth

NVIDIA

For the creation and continued development of OpenVDB.

ACM SIGGRAPH Distinguished Educator Award

Scott Owen

Georgia State University
 

For his work done to establish influential programs and provide opportunities for educators in and beyond the SIGGRAPH community.

ACM SIGGRAPH Academy Class

David J. Kasik

For technical contributions and industry impact in the areas of computer-aided design, user interfaces, visual analytics, and massive model visualization.

Niloy Mitra

For his pioneering technical contributions in shape analysis and structure-aware geometry processing.

Ken Museth

For the creation and continued development of OpenVDB.
Practitioner Award

Wolfgang Heidrich

For fundamental contributions to the development and analysis of computational imaging and display systems.
Computer Graphics Achievement Award

Paul Brown

For his pioneering efforts in the fields of computational art, generative systems, and cellular automata.
Distinguished Artist Award

Scott Owen

For his work in establishing influential educational programs and providing opportunities for educators in and beyond the SIGGRAPH community.
Distinguished Educator Award