My Six Decade Experience in Visual Imaging

Abstract:
NO PART OF TODAY’S DIGITAL ENVIRONMENTS IS CHANGING FASTER THAN GRAPHICAL DIGITAL IMAGERY AND ITS DISTRIBUTION

Knowledge of the fundamentals of computer science and the availability of the new applications and programming tools is now and will continue to be as important as the reading and writing requirements for entering Freshman. This is already evident with the fact that CS/CIS already teach at least one course to 76% of Cornell’s undergraduate students.
I have now had the fantastic opportunity to teach at Cornell for more than six decades in four colleges and five departments and this now probably my final year. During this more than half-century I have been blessed with superb mentors and excellent students from many unrelated disciplines, but also confronted the hurdles of interdisciplinary barriers which are about to change in the very near future.
Two of my students have won the most prestigious computer graphics awards, eighteen of my former students have won Hollywood’s technical Oscars or Emmy’s, and I have collaborated with or taught at the ETH, Stanford, Hewlett-Packard, Autodesk, Nvidia, Intel to name a few. More recently I have been working with computer scientists, VR and AR experts,  roboticists,  perception psychologists, neuroscientists, experts in the Medical industry, structural and mechanical engineers, as well as artist and photographers and graphic designers. As the boundaries between disciplines become “fuzzier and more blurred”, academia in general, and computer science in particular must adapt! . We owe this to our students! In this talk I will share my experiences and thoughts about education in the field of computer science.

Bio:
Donald Greenberg, the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Computer Graphics, has been researching and teaching in the field of computer graphics since 1966. During the last 15 years, he has been primarily concerned with research advancing the state-of-the-art in computer graphics and utilizing these techniques as they may be applied to various disciplines. His specialties include real-time realistic image generation, color science, and computer-aided architectural design. He presently teaches computer graphics courses in Computer Science, computer-aided design for the Department of Architecture, computer animation for the Department of Art, and technology strategy at the Business School. He received his B.C.E. from Cornell in 1958 and his Ph.D. in 1968.