SIGGRAPH 2022 Hybrid Conference Enjoys Notable Numbers with In-Person and Virtual Attendees

CHICAGO, Aug. 11, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- SIGGRAPH 2022, the 49^th annual conference and exhibition on computer graphics and interactive techniques, closed the in-person portion of the conference, 8-11 August 2022 in Vancouver, Canada, with more than 11,700 attendees, 90-plus exhibitors from 16 countries, remarkable featured speakers, and a variety of panels, programs, and hands-on experiences. Access to the virtual component of SIGGRAPH 2022 will continue through 31 October 2022.

SIGGRAPH 2022 offered a platform to share exceptional offerings in digital art, technology, computer science, and various innovations from more than 2,400 contributors. The conference and virtual experience were enjoyed by an international audience from 74 countries and garnered 30,000-plus views during the livestream sessions across the four-day, in-person conference. The top five attended programs in the virtual platform included Technical Papers, Birds of a Feather, Talks, Courses, and Production Sessions.

"Every year we gather our global community to showcase how computer graphics and interactive techniques shape the future," said Munkhtsetseg Nandigjav, SIGGRAPH 2022 Conference Chair. "After two years of meeting virtually, I was thrilled to host our return to a live, in-person conference in Vancouver. The city was a wonderful host, from the amazing location to the warm welcome from the local community. SIGGRAPH participants were incredibly joyful and excited to reunite and see the latest developments in our field. Being face-to-face at these SIGGRAPH conferences is an annual recharge. It's an opportunity to come together to learn, share our passions, and enrich our skills. I'm honored to be a part of this celebration as we continue to encourage the development and innovation in the arts and sciences that impact the world around us. And I'm looking forward to seeing how our work continues to evolve headfirst into the future."

Highlights from the conference included:

• Featured Speakers: Sougwen Chung, Ed Catmull, Pat Hanrahan, Sarah Bond, and Ime Archibong
• Production teams behind some of the year's top films took part in the Production Sessions, including DNEG, Pixar Animation Studios, Wētā FX, and Walt Disney Animation Studios
• New for 2022, the inauguration of Conference Papers, where exciting emerging ideas were presented in a shorter format than traditional Technical Papers
• Technical Papers showcases the latest industry advancements and scientific contributions. A total number of 247 papers were selected out of a record number of submissions, and five "Best of" honors were awarded
• Roundtables allowed participants to connect directly and hold intimate conversations with Technical Papers, Art Papers, Courses, and Talks contributors, and interact in small group settings
• Emerging Technologies and Immersive Pavilion showcased the latest in VR, AR, and mixed reality innovations
• Metaverse discussions and workshops were covered in the Featured Speakers, Frontiers, Appy Hour, Real-Time Live!, and Courses programs
• VR Theater presented the evolved storytelling and growth of virtual reality content

SIGGRAPH 2022 also celebrated this year's contributors by honoring some "Best of" from various programs, including:

Art Gallery
Best in Show – "Ray"
Weidi Zhang, Media Arts and Technology Program (MAT), University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)

Art Papers
Best Art Paper – "Traditional African Dances Preservation Using Deep Learning Techiques"
Adebunmi Odefunso, Purdue University/Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; Esteban Garcia Bravo, Purdue University; and Yingjie Chen, Purdue University

Electronic Theater
Best in Show – "The Seine's Tears"
Yanis Belaid, Pôle 3D (France)

Jury's Choice – "The End of War"
Lei Chen, Tsinghua University (China)

Best Student Project – "Yallah!"
Nayla Nassar, Rubika (France)

Audience Choice* – "Alternate Mesozoic"
Lucie Laudrin, ESMA (France)

Emerging Technologies
Best in Show – "HDR VR"
Nathan Matsuda, Yang Zhao, Alex Chapiro, Clinton Smith, and Douglas Lanman, Reality Labs Research, Meta

Immersive Pavilion
Top Selection – "Journal of My Journey: Seamless Interaction in Virtuality and Reality With Digital Fabrication and Sensory Feedback"
Miguel Ying Jie Then, Ching Lui, Yvone Tsai Chen, Zin Yin Lim, Ping Hsuan Han, National Taipei University of Technology

Real-Time Live!
Best in Show – "A Showcase of Decima Engine in Horizon Forbidden West
Hugh Malan, Maarten van der Gaag, Guerrilla

Audience Choice – "AI and Physics Assisted Character Pose Authoring"
Florent Bocquelet, Boris Oreshkin, Dominic Laflamme, Felix Harvey, Louis-Simon Ménard, Jeremy Cowles, and Bay Raitt, Unity Technologies

Technical Papers
Best Paper Awards
"Instant Neural Graphics Primitives With a Multiresolution Hash Encoding"
Thomas Müller, Alex Evans, Christoph Schied, and Alexander Keller, NVIDIA

"DeepPhase: Periodic Autoencoders for Learning Motion Phase Manifolds"
Sebastian Starke, University of Edinburgh/Electronic Arts; Ian Mason, University of Edinburgh; and Taku Komura, University of Hong Kong
"Spelunking the Deep: Guaranteed Queries on General Neural Implicit Surfaces via Range Analysis"

Nicholas Sharp, University of Toronto; Alec Jacobson, University of Toronto/Adobe
"Image Features Influence Reaction Time: A Learned Probabilistic Perceptual Model for Saccade Latency"
Budmonde Duinkharjav, New York University; Praneeth Chakravarthula, Princeton University/UNC Chapel Hill; Rachel Brown, NVIDIA Research; Anjul Patney, NVIDIA Research; and Qi Sun, New York University

"CLIPasso: Semantically Aware Object Sketching"
Yael Vinker, Tel Aviv University/École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne; Ehsan Pajouheshgar, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne; Jessica Y. Bo, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne/ETH; Roman Christian Bachmann, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne; Amit Bermano, Tel Aviv University; Daniel Cohen-Or, Tel Aviv University; Amir Zamir, EPFL; and Ariel Shamir, Reichman University

VR Theater
Best in Show – "On the Morning You Wake (to the End of the World)"
Steve Jamison, Mike Brett, Archer's Mark and Astrea; Pierre Zandrowicz, Atlas V and Astrea; and Arnaud Colinart, Atlas V

*Vote tallied on-site via survey poll.
Best in Show awards determined by a six-member jury; Audience Choice awards determined by the live audience.

The SIGRRAPH 2022 virtual experience is available until 31 October 2022. To learn more and register for the ongoing virtual conference, go to https://s2022.siggraph.org/.

About ACM, ACM SIGGRAPH
ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, is the world's largest educational and scientific computing society, uniting educators, researchers, and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources, and address the field's challenges. ACM SIGGRAPH is a special interest group within ACM that serves as an interdisciplinary community for members in research, technology, and applications in computer graphics and interactive techniques. The SIGGRAPH conference is the world's leading annual interdisciplinary educational experience showcasing the latest in computer graphics and interactive techniques

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