Saarbrücken Max Planck Director Honored Internationally for Outstanding Research Achievements

To be elected into in the so-called "ACM SIGGRAPH Academy" of the ACM's Computer Graphics Division (SIGGRAPH) is considered one of the world's highest honors in computer graphics research. It recognizes researchers who have made substantial contributions to the field, significantly shaping the discipline and its industrial application.

H.P. Seidel was selected to the Academy in particular for his contributions to spline and mesh processing, and for the impact of his research and mentorship.

The works of H.P. Seidel are among the most cited in computer graphics: As a result, they have achieved a high standing within the research field and have influenced numerous other scientific works. Professor Seidel is also very successful in training young scientists; more than 70 former members of his research group have been appointed to professorships in Germany and abroad.

After receiving his doctorate in mathematics from the University of Tübingen in 1987, H.P. Seidel was awarded his habilitation in computer science in 1989, also in Tübingen. After an assistant professorship in computer science at the University of Waterloo in Canada and a full professorship at the University of Erlangen, Professor Seidel moved to the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Saarbrücken as Scientific Director in 1999 and became Honorary Professor at Saarland University in the same year. Among other things, he was Spokesperson of the Cluster of Excellence "Multimodal Computing and Interaction" (2007-2019), which was funded within the German Excellence Initiative, and Co-Director of the "Max Planck Center for Visual Computing and Communication" (2003-2020), which was established in collaboration with Stanford University.

In the past more than two decades in Saarbrücken, Professor Hans-Peter Seidel has also received numerous scientific honors, most notably was the Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation in 2003, the highest scientific distinction in Germany. He also holds the Eurographics Distinguished Career Award (2012), the ACM Solid Modeling Pioneer Distinction (2016), and the Eurographics Gold Medal (2017).
 

Background ACM SIGGRAPH Academy:

ACM SIGGRAPH, the Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), describes itself as an international association of researchers, artists, developers, filmmakers, scientists, and professional experts working in these fields.

Founded in 2018, the goal of the ACM SIGGRAPH Academy is to recognize individuals who have made substantial contributions to the field of computer graphics. These are principal leaders of the field, whose efforts have shaped the discipline and/or industry, and led the research and/or innovation in computer graphics and interactive techniques, according to the organization's website.