Kurt Akeley is a computer graphics

Computer graphics

Computer graphics are graphics created using computers and, more generally, the representation and manipulation of image data by a computer with help from specialized software and hardware....

 engineer

Engineer

An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems. Engineers design materials, structures, machines and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality,...

.

Biography

Kurt Akeley received a B.E.E. from the University of Delaware

University of Delaware

The university is organized into seven colleges:* College of Agriculture and Natural Resources* College of Arts and Sciences* Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics* College of Earth, Ocean and Environment* College of Education and Human Development...

 in 1980, and an M.S.E.E. from Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 in 1982. That year, he joined with Jim Clark

James H. Clark

James H. Clark is an American entrepreneur and computer scientist. He founded several notable Silicon Valley technology companies, including Silicon Graphics, Inc., Netscape Communications Corporation, myCFO and Healtheon...

 in the founding team of Silicon Graphics

Silicon Graphics

Silicon Graphics, Inc. was a manufacturer of high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and software, founded in 1981 by Jim Clark...

, Incorporated (later renamed SGI).

Akeley developed the frame buffers and processor subsystems for the early IRIS series products and many of the CAD tools used to design these and other products. Akeley was instrumental in developing the graphics systems for the Power Series and Onyx

SGI Onyx

The SGI Onyx, code named Eveready and Terminator , is a series of visualization systems designed and manufactured by SGI, introduced in 1993 and offered in two models, deskside and rackmount. The Onyx's basic system architecture is based on the SGI Challenge servers, but with the notable inclusion...

 systems, including the GTX, the VGX, and the RealityEngine. Akeley also led the design and documentation of the OpenGL

OpenGL

OpenGL is a standard specification defining a cross-language, cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 2D and 3D computer graphics. The interface consists of over 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three-dimensional scenes from simple primitives. OpenGL...

 graphics software specification, which is now supported by Silicon Graphics and many other workstation and personal computer vendors.

In 1984, Akeley's colleagues at Silicon Graphics recognized his contributions by selecting him as the first overall Spirit of SGI award winner. Akeley later became a chief engineer and then vice president at SGI.

After leaving SGI, Akeley resumed his studies at Stanford University in the Stanford Computer Graphics Lab researching 3D display technology and earned a PhD in electrical engineering in 2004. During this time, Akeley consulted at NVIDIA

NVIDIA

Nvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...

 and collaborated on the design of the Cg

Cg programming language

Cg is a high-level shading language developed by Nvidia in close collaboration with Microsoft for programming vertex and pixel shaders...

 hardware shading languages for GPUs

Graphics processing unit

A graphics processing unit or GPU is a specialized circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory in such a way so as to accelerate the building of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display...

. He was also the editor (i.e., the paper chair) for the SIGGRAPH

SIGGRAPH

SIGGRAPH is the name of the annual conference on computer graphics convened by the ACM SIGGRAPH organization. The first SIGGRAPH conference was in 1974. The conference is attended by tens of thousands of computer professionals...

 2000 conference proceedings and a principal researcher at Microsoft Research's Silicon Valley lab. He is currently the CTO of a Silicon Valley start-up, Lytro

Lytro

Lytro is a startup company founded in 2006 by Ren Ng, Ph.D, a light-field photography researcher at Stanford University that aims to deliver a light field camera for consumers by the end of 2011....

.

Awards

Akeley received the 1993 Distinguished Alumnus award from the Department of Electrical Engineering of the University of Delaware and was given a University of Delaware Presidential Citation for Outstanding Achievement in 1995.

Akeley received the 1995 SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award in recognition of his contributions to the architecture, design, and realization of high performance 3D graphics hardware systems.

In 1996, Akeley was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery

Association for Computing Machinery

The Association for Computing Machinery is a learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership is more than 92,000 as of 2009...

.

He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering

National Academy of Engineering

The National Academy of Engineering is a government-created non-profit institution in the United States, that was founded in 1964 under the same congressional act that led to the founding of the National Academy of Sciences...

.

Publications

• Kurt Akeley and Tom Jermoluk, High-Performance Polygon Rendering, SIGGRAPH '88 Conference Proceedings, pp. 239–246.
• Kurt Akeley, The Silicon Graphics 4D/240GTX Superworkstation, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, July 1989, pp. 71–83.
• Paul Haeberli
  Paul Haeberli
  Paul E. Haeberli is an American computer graphics programmer and researcher.Paul Haeberli studied for a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, USA....
  
   and Kurt Akeley, The Accumulation Buffer: Hardware Support for High-Quality Rendering, SIGGRAPH '90 Conference Proceedings, pp. 309–318.
• Kurt Akeley, "Issues and Directions for Graphics Hardware Accelerators", Rendering, Visualization and Rasterization Hardware (Eurographics'91 Workshop) in Advances in Computer Graphics Hardware VI, Springer, 1993.
• Mark Segal and Kurt Akeley, The OpenGL Graphics System: A Specification, Silicon Graphics, Inc., 1992.
• Kurt Akeley, RealityEngine Graphics, SIGGRAPH '93 Conference Proceedings, pp. 109–116.
• William R. Mark, R. Steven Glanville, Kurt Akeley, Mark J. Kilgard, Cg: A System for Programming Graphics Hardware in a C-like Language, Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2003.
• Kurt Akeley, Simon J. Watt, Ahna Reza Girshick, and Martin S. Banks, A stereo display prototype with multiple focal distances, ACM Transactions on Graphics
  ACM Transactions on Graphics
  ACM Transactions on Graphics is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that aims to disseminate the latest findings of note in the field of computer graphics. It has been published since 1982 by the Association for Computing Machinery...
  
  , August 2004.

External links

• Computer Graphics Achievement Award citation
• Interview with Kurt Akeley
• Video of the GDC 2000 Programming Keynote, by Kurt Akeley
• CTO at Lytro

Research resources

• Kurt Akeley Papers, 1982–2000 (23 linear ft.) are housed in the Department of Special Collections and University Archives at Stanford University Libraries