Asiagraphics Outstanding Technical Contributions Award (2022)

The 2022 Asiagraphics (AG) Outstanding Technical Contributions Award was presented to Prof. Kun Zhou from Zhejiang University, China. The winner of this award was selected by the award jury chaired by Prof. Ming Lin (UMD College Park) and Prof. Leif Kobbelt (RWTH Aachen).

Prof. Kun Zhou is recognized as one of the most pre-eminent researchers in computer graphics, and has made fundamental contributions in major areas of computer graphics, with far-reaching impact in the graphics and gaming industry.

In his early career, Prof. Zhou pioneered the differential domain approaches for editing and deformation of 3D mesh surfaces, which have become the foundation of many graphics applications that involves shape deformation. His UVAtlas software based on his Iso-Charts parameterization algorithm has become the de facto industrial standard tool for texture mapping.

Prof. Zhou’s work on GPU computing is recognized as seminal contributions to the field. He introduced the first GPU algorithm for constructing kd-trees, a data structure crucial for many graphics and vision applications. He and his team developed the remarkable RenderAnts system, which, for the first time, maps all stages of the film rendering pipeline onto the GPU and runs an order of magnitude faster than Pixar’s RenderMan.

Prof. Zhou’s outstanding work of 3D face shape regression is the first to enable high-quality facial performance capture in real time with an ordinary camera. He also pioneered single-image-based techniques for realistic hair and avatar digitalization. To date, his avatar technologies have been licensed by 1000+ companies worldwide with aggregated daily active users of over 100 million.

Prof. Zhou worked actively in the community. He served as program co-chairs of PG10, CGI12, and are general co-chairs of GMP23, IEEE VR23. He is/was on the editorial boards of leading graphics journals, including ACM TOG, IEEE TVCG, IEEE CG&A, CGF, CVM, etc.

Due to his research work and academic service, Prof. Zhou was elected an IEEE Fellow in 2015, with the citation “for contributions to shape modeling and GPU computing”, and elected an ACM Fellow in 2020, with the citation “for contributions to computer graphics”.