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High-Performance Graphics 2022

Virtual Conference: July 11-14, In-Person Reception & Keynote: August 7

Diversity & Inclusion Program

Creating diverse environments with people from a multitude of backgrounds has time and again proven to create the most fertile ground for creativity, productivity, and innovation. At High Performance Graphics (HPG) we have committed ourselves to generate these environments even in these daring times. To do so, we are announcing the HPG Diversity & Inclusion Program during the conference in 2022.

Day 1: “Sharing Experiences on Being a Woman in Computer Science”

Cristina Nader Vasconcelos, Google Research

Abstract: In this talk, I will talk about women pioneers in computing and why we need women in computer science. I will share some initiatives and resources available on the topic and how to get involved in your community.

Cristina Nader Vasconcelos

Cristina Nader Vasconcelos is a Research Software Engineer at Google Research, Brain team in Montreal Canada. She obtained her PhD from PUC-Rio/Brazil in Computer Graphics, and she is interested in Machine Learning, Parallel Processing, Computer Graphics/Vision, and Speech Recognition. Before joining Google she worked as an Associate professor at UFF/Brazil.

Day 2: “Diversity in Our Time: A Rendering Perspective”

Apollo Ellis, NVIDIA

Abstract: We will discuss an atypical journey into computer graphics. We'll battle the roughness of the bay area street life, schizophrenia, and believe it or not being at top tier schools in computer science, PhDs in rendering, and even getting a best paper placing at HPG. If you thought you had reasons for imposter syndrome, this might be relatable. Or will it? Either way if we're theoretically going to have a diverse mindset, work force, and community we need to examine these types of outliers. Consider this a firefly in your path tracer... do we know the proper probability distribution function? Can we be unbiased? Get ready for a trip up the graphics pipeline with a serious twist!

Apollo Ellis

Dr Apollo Ellis is a long time HPG attendee, previous winner of an HPG best paper runner up award, and graduate of UC Berkeley CS (BA), UT Austin CS (MS), and UIUC CS (Ph.D). He helped found and direct the HPG diversity scholarship program and served on the HPG committee for the last four years. He currently works at Nvidia on the Omniverse rendering team, as a senior ray tracing engineer.

Day 3: “On Being a Computer Scientist: If I had a DeLorean”

Aaron Lefohn, NVIDIA

Aaron Lefohn

Aaron Lefohn, Vice President, Graphics Research at NVIDIA, leads the Real-Time Rendering Research team. Aaron has led real-time rendering and graphics programming model research teams for over a decade and has productized many research ideas into games, film rendering, GPU hardware, and GPU APIs.

His teams' inventions have played key roles in bringing ray tracing to real-time graphics, combining AI and computer graphics, and pioneering real-time AI computer graphics. Some of the NVIDIA products derived from Aaron's teams' inventions include DLSS, RTX Direct Illumination (RTXDI), NVIDIA's Real-Time Denoisers (NRD), the OptiX Deep Learning Denoiser, and more. The teams' current focus areas include real-time physically-based light transport, AI computer graphics, image metrics, and graphics systems.

In the distant past, Aaron worked in rendering R&D at Pixar Animation Studios, creating interactive rendering tools for film artists, was part of a graphics startup called Neoptica creating rendering software and programming models for Sony PlayStation 3, and also led real-time rendering research at Intel. Aaron received his Ph.D. in computer science from UC Davis, his M.S. in computer science from the University of Utah, and also an M.S. in theoretical chemistry.

Day 4: “Reaching the Unreachables — Equal eSports Initiative”

Gabriela Antonczyk, Deutsche Telekom AG

Gabriela Antonczyk

Gabriela Antonczyk is Brand Manager at Deutsche Telekom. In this role she leads various international projects within the Brand Experience team. Most recently she has been involved in the Equal eSports Initiative driven by Deutsche Telekom together with Partners: esports player foundation and SK Gaming. The initiative is mainly focusing on the empowerment of female and non-binary players to get on top and reach their dreams in the eSports and gaming world.

Prior to her role as Brand Manager, she led projects in the area of Technology and Innovation focusing on the development of new use cases in the 5G and AR/VR area together with Partners and Start-ups.