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Ronald Paul "Ron" Fedkiw (Template:Pron-en) (born February 27, 1968) is an associate professor in the Stanford University department of computer science and a leading researcher in the field of computer graphics, focusing on topics relating to physically based simulation of natural phenomena and level sets. His techniques have been employed in over twenty motion pictures. He has earned recognition at the 80th Academy Awards as well as from the National Academy for Science.

His Oscar was awarded for developing techniques that enabled many technically sophisticated adaptations including the visual effects in 21st century movies in the Star Wars, Harry Potter, Terminator, and Pirates of the Caribbean franchises. Fedkiw has designed a platform that has been used to create many of the movie world's most advanced special effects since it was first used on the T-X character in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Although he has won an Oscar award for his work, he does not design the visual effects that use his technique. Instead, he has developed a system that other award-winning technicians and engineers have used to create visual effects for some of the world's most expensive and highest-grossing movies.

He is also a co-founder of PIVOT, which stands for "Personal Improvement Via Omniscient Technology". The stated mission of the company is to develop technology to help people achieve their personal goals of looking better, feeling better, and living better using omniscient technology.

Early life and family

Fedkiw, who was born in Buffalo, New York, earned his B.S. and M.A. from University at Buffalo, The State University of New York in mathematics in 1990 and 1991 respectively. Then, he received his Ph.D. in applied mathematics from UCLA in 1996. His dissertation was chaired by Stanley Osher. He completed postdoctoral studies both at UCLA in Mathematics and at Caltech in Aeronautics before joining the Stanford Computer Science Department. Fedkiw has two daughters: Brittany was born in 2000 and Briana was born in 2003.

Career

Fedkiw is now an associate professor in the department of computer science. Fedkiw serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Computational Physics and the Journal of Scientific Computing. He has published Level Set Methods and Dynamic Implicit Surfaces (Springer 2002, ISBN 0-387-95482-1) along with Stanley Osher.

Since 2000, Fedkiw has been a consultant with Industrial Light and Magic receiving screen credits for work on Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Poseidon. In addition, he has worked on all three Pirates of the Caribbean and some Harry Potter movies. Fedkiw's techniques have made possible the renderings of the sea in the Pirates movies and the dragon's flaming breath in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. They have also made possible the rushing floodwaters in Evan Almighty and were first used with T-X in Terminator 3. Fedkiw feels the best result of the use of his techniques was the sinking ship shots in Poseidon. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest won the Academy Award for Visual Effects at the 79th Academy Awards awarded on February 25, 2007 and Poseidon was also nominated that year in that category. Among the applications that Fedkiw's math engine is responsible for is the tentacles of Davy Jones (pictured left) in the Academy Award-winning Dead Man's Chest.

Fedkiw felt his techniques were employed best in Poseidon.

On February 9, 2008 in the Academy Scientific and Technical Award ceremony at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, Fedkiw was awarded a 80th Academy Award for Technical Achievement for the development of the Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) fluid simulation system. He shared the award with Nick Rasmussen and Frank Losasso Petterson. Fedkiw does physics-based simulation that enable better water effects. Previous representations had varying levels of success. They often did well at surface representation, but were less efficient at smaller particles such as breaking waves. Fedkiw's team's innovative “particle level set method” allows both smooth surfaces and water breakdown renderings including water spray. Fedkiw has worked with Industrial Light and Magic, Pixar Animation Studios, Intel Corporation, Honda and Sony Pictures Imageworks. Fedkiw commented that when he was informed that he would be presented his award by Jessica Alba he was quoted by the Associated Press as follows: "They said I got 60 seconds so I might just spend the last 15 realizing I'm 10 feet away from the most beautiful woman on the planet . . . and no restraining order this time."

Fedkiw and his colleagues have designed a C++ code library for Physics Based Modelling (PhysBAM http://physbam.stanford.edu) that facilitates the creation of better special effects for movies, including water, smoke, fire, cloth, rigid bodies and deformable bodies. Fedkiw often receives screen credit for consulting with special effects engineers, technicians and movie executives. His research has focused on the design of new computational algorithms that can be used for many purposes, including computational fluid dynamics and soft body dynamics, computer graphics, computer vision and computational biomechanics. In fact, the system can also be used for a range of applications from motion capture to rendering, but Fedkiw's main emphasis is on physics-based simulation.

Fedkiw has described his work as follows:

It is an exhaustive task to prescribe the motion of every degree of freedom in a piece of clothing or a crashing wave. . .Since these motions are governed by physical processes, it can be difficult to make these phenomena appear natural. Thus, physically based simulation has become quite popular in the special effects industry. The same class of tools useful for computational fluid dynamics is also useful for sinking a ship on the big screen.

Omniscient Technology

In the spring of 2012, Fedkiw will be teaching a freshman seminar at Stanford University entitled "Cellphones, Sensors, and You", which will be focused on the uses of Omniscient Technology in the world today. Omniscient Technology is a technical word coined by Fedkiw in order to describe the suite of technologies used to gather all possible information. The term only applies to the gathering of information, and has nothing to do with its storage, classification, and interpretation. This is unlike other terms such as machine learning which is a branch of artificial intelligence that could be used to process and interpret the data collected using omniscient technology. Notably, the term artificial intelligence was coined by John McCarthy whose office at Stanford University is directly next to Fedkiw's office on the second floor of the Bill Gates computer science building.

Omniscient Technology is a more technical term to describe an array of devices which are often referred to using the slang term "Big Brother", which draws a connection to the invasive style of surveillance and monitoring described in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is derived from the term Omniscience. It's important to distinguish omniscient technology from ubiquitous computing, where ubiquitous computing is used to refer to technology being present everywhere, and omniscient technology refers to pervasive technology that is able to sense the environment around it and interpret this input. In a sense, ubiquitous computing is a necessary precursor to omniscient technology.

Examples

As technology becomes smaller, more easily embeddable, and therefore more prevalent in the current environment, omniscient technology already is a major part of the modern world: traffic enforcement cameras, radar guns, security cameras, etc. Because of the nature of many of these early technologies, omniscient technology (and the slang term "Big Brother") is often used in a negative light. For example, red light cameras, though outwardly intended to make driving safer by preventing people from running red lights, are often criticized as being a purely money-making exploit of law enforcement. However, other uses of omniscient technology shine a more genuine light on the use of omniscient technology. For example, radar speed signs are not hooked up to any data collection device that is intended to penalize, but exist solely to warn drivers that they are traveling over the speed limit, encouraging them to slow down. Technology like this are examples of how omniscient technology can be used to improve people's daily lives.

Perhaps one of the most famous uses of omniscient technology in history was the use of a recording system during President Nixon's term in office to keep a record of as much of the daily interactions of the president as possible, as President Nixon believed that this would be important for preserving history for posterity. Recording devices were positioned throughout the White House and Camp David, and when the electronic beeper that the president wore as part of the presidential locator system entered into one of these areas where recording devices were present, they would automatically begin recording. These recordings played an important role in the Watergate scandal.

Emerging Uses

As technology, and in particular sensor technology, becomes smaller and cheaper to produce, omniscient technology will have an even larger impact on people's everyday lives. Devices that people already carry around with them everyday, such as cellphones, GPS's, etc, as well as devices people already have around the house, such as XBoxs, Nintendo Wii's, exercise machines, etc., are already laden with sensors that are capable of collecting and aggregating a wide range of data. Companies are just beginning to take advantage of this emergence of omniscient technology. For example, BodyMedia are making wearable devices that help people live healthier. Progressive car insurance is installing devices in people's cars to track how they drive, and provide discounts based on good driving habits. The American government is also becoming more aware of the prevalence of omniscient technology, and recently a bipartisan bill called the "Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights" was passed to help protect people's personal information from invasive applications and devices.

Personal

Fedkiw is a former competitive powerlifter. His personal bests lifts were squat of 800 pounds (362.9 kg; 57.1 st), bench press of 555 pounds (251.7 kg; 39.6 st) and deadlift of 735 pounds (333.4 kg; 52.5 st), all in the 90 kilograms (198.4 lb; 14.2 st) weight class.

Awards

• Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers
• National Academy for Science: Award for Initiatives in Research
• SIGGRAPH: Significant New Researcher Award (2005)

Book

• S. Osher and R. Fedkiw, "Level Set Methods and Dynamic Implicit Surfaces", Springer-Verlag, New York (2002).

See also

• Industrial Light and Magic
• Level set method

Notes

1. "Founding". pivotmylife.com. Retrieved 2011-04-10.
2. "Mission Statement". pivotmylife.com. Retrieved 2011-04-10.
3. ^ "Fedkiw, R., "A Survey of Chemically Reacting, Compressible Flow", Ph.D. Thesis, UCLA Mathematics Department, June 1996". Stanford.edu. 1997. Retrieved 2008-10-17.
4. ^ "Ron Fedkiw". Stanford.edu. Retrieved 2008-10-17.
5. ^ Levy, Dawn (2007-02-19). "Computer scientist reveals the math and science behind blockbuster movies". Stanford University. Retrieved 2008-02-13.
6. "Ron Fedkiw to be awarded an Oscar for his SFX work". FILMdetail. 2008-01-31. Retrieved 2008-02-13.
7. "Stanford computer scientist makes splash with Academy Award for fluid simulation" (Press release) (in English). Stanford University. 2008-01-16. Retrieved 2008-02-15.{{cite press release}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
8. ^ Dada, Kamil (2008-01-22). "CS prof wins film award". Stanford Daily. Archived from the original on February 9, 2008. Retrieved 2008-02-13. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
9. "Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences:2006 (79th) VISUAL EFFECTS". Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 2008-02-13.
10. "Awards for Ronald Fedkiw". IMDb.com, Inc. Retrieved 2008-02-13.
11. ^ Pearson, Ryan (2008-02-11). "Alba dazzles nerds at tech Oscars". USA Today. Retrieved 2008-02-13.

External links

• Ron Fedkiw Homepage at Stanford
• Ronald Fedkiw at IMDb
• Fedkiw at Association for Computing Machinery
• Ron Fedkiw at New York Times
• Ronald Fedkiw at the Mathematics Genealogy Project

Template:Persondata

• 1968 births
• Living people
• Academy Award for Technical Achievement winners
• Computer graphics professionals
• American mathematicians
• People from Buffalo, New York
• Powerlifters
• Stanford University faculty
• University at Buffalo alumni
• University of California, Los Angeles alumni