Pixar founder who brought Disney research center to Carnegie Mellon wins $1M award
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Pixar Animation Studios co-founder Ed Catmull, who brought a Disney research center to Carnegie Mellon University in 2008, has won one of the highest honors in computing — the 2019 A.M. Turing Award.
Catmull, who shares the $1 million prize with former Pixar colleague Pat Hanrahan of Stanford University, was cited for “fundamental contributions to 3-D computer graphics, and the impact of computer-generated imagery in filmmaking and other applications.”
“Ed Catmull and Pat Hanrahan have fundamentally influenced the field of computer graphics through conceptual innovation and contributions to both software and hardware,” the Association for Computing Machinery said in a statement. “Their work has had a revolutionary impact on filmmaking, leading to a new genre of entirely computer-animated feature films beginning 25 years ago with ‘Toy Story’ and continuing to the present day.”
“Computer-generated imagery has transformed the way films are made and experienced, while also profoundly impacting the broader entertainment industry,” said ACM President Cherri M. Pancake.
In 2008, Catmull was instrumental in bringing a Disney Research facility to CMU’s Oakland campus, where researchers developed new computer graphics technology for movie, video game and robotics applications.
That same year, CMU’s Entertainment Technology Center named Catmull the first recipient of its Randy Pausch Prize.
The Disney Research lab left CMU in 2018.
ACM will present the award at its annual awards banquet on June 20 in San Francisco.