Jessica Hodgins joined the Robotics Institute and Computer Science department at Carnegie Mellon University as an Associate Professor in Fall of 2000. She is now a Professor of Computer Science and Robotics, Associate Director for the Faculty in the Robotics Institute as well as the part-time Director of the new Disney Research Pittsburgh Laboratory. Prior to moving to CMU, she was an Associate Professor and Assistant Dean in the College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. She received her PhD in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1989. She has received a NSF Young Investigator Award, a Packard Fellowship, and a Sloan Fellowship. She was Editor in Chief of ACM Transactions on Graphics from 2000 to 2002 and Papers Chair for ACM SIGGRAPH 2003.

Dr. Gross is a Professor of Computer Science at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich (ETH), head of the Computer Graphics Laboratory, and the Director of Disney Research, Zürich. For more than 20 years, Dr. Gross has been pursuing basic and applied research in computer graphics, image generation and display, geometric modeling, and computer animation. His research interests include point-based graphics, physically based modeling, immersive displays, and 3D video. He has published more than 200 scientific papers and he holds various patents on core graphics and visualization technologies. Dr. Gross received a master of science in electrical and computer engineering and a PhD in computer graphics and image analysis, both from Saarland University in Germany. Dr. Gross serves on the boards of numerous international research institutes, societies, and governmental organizations. He also cofounded Cyfex AG, Novodex AG, LiberoVision AG, and Dybuster AG.

Tony DeRose is currently a Senior Scientist and lead of the Research Group at Pixar Animation Studios. He received a BS in physics from the University of California, Davis, and a PhD in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley. From 1986 to 1995, Dr. DeRose was a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. In 1998, he was a major contributor to the Academy Award®–winning short film Geri's Game. In 1999, he received the ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award. And in 2006, he received a Scientific and Technical Academy Award® for his work on surface representations.