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Microsoft researcher Johannes Kopf |
Johannes Kopf, a Microsoft researcher who specializes in computer graphics and was key to the development of Microsoft Hyperlapse (opens in new tab), has been awarded the 2015 ACM SIGGRAPH Significant New Researcher Award (opens in new tab).
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The award honors early career researchers, and past recipients (opens in new tab) have generally gone on to become leaders in computer graphics research (opens in new tab).
"It is an indicator of somebody becoming one of the stars in the field," said Richard Szeliski (opens in new tab), a distinguished scientist with Microsoft Research who has worked closely with Kopf.
For Kopf (opens in new tab), it was a pleasant surprise to be lauded by his peers at this stage in his career.
"I can still remember thinking years ago as a young student, 'Wow, it would be so awesome to be part of this community,'" he said. "At that time, I never dreamed of getting this award."
Kopf was honored in part for his 2014 paper on hyperlapse technology, which became the basis for the Microsoft Hyperlapse products (opens in new tab) that were released earlier this year. The tools allow anyone to turn long videos into smooth and speedy ones, and it grew out of Kopf's own desire to make his first-person mountain climbing videos more interesting.
The SIGGRAPH judges also noted Kopf's other significant work. That includes popular techniques for depixelizing (opens in new tab) and re-pixelizing (opens in new tab) pixel art, as well as other groundbreaking work in digital imaging, such as filling in missing regions in images (opens in new tab) and panoramas (opens in new tab) and advanced model-based photo editing (opens in new tab). His early work on capturing and viewing gigapixel images (opens in new tab) has helped popularize this format.
Szeliski said he has been impressed by Kopf's ability to consistently come up with great ideas that get other researchers excited.
"He is one of these people who always produces something that other people really like and then build upon," Szeliski said. "He's continuously a very creative and productive person."
Kopf joined Microsoft Research in 2008, after receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Konstanz in his native Germany.
But Kopf said his interest in computer graphics goes back to around age 12, when he started writing his own computer graphics programs. At the time, he wasn't even aware that the field he now works in existed.
"I didn't know anything about the research community at that point, but I was doing research and it was a lot of fun," he said.
Kopf is scheduled to receive the award on August 10 at the SIGGRAPH 2015 (opens in new tab) annual conference in Los Angeles.
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Allison Linn is a senior writer at Microsoft Research. Follow Allison on Twitter (opens in new tab).