Kurt Akeley | |
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 Akeley at SIGGRAPH 2012 | |
| Born | Kurt Akeley (1958-06-08)June 8, 1958 (age 67) |
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Kurt Akeley (born June 8, 1958) is an Americancomputer graphicsengineer.
Akeley was elected into theNational Academy of Engineering in 2005 for contributions to the architecture of 3-D graphics systems and the definition of Open GL, now the industry standard.
Kurt Akeley received a B.E.E. from theUniversity of Delaware in 1980, and an M.S.E.E. fromStanford University in 1982. That year, he joined withJim Clark in the founding team ofSilicon Graphics, Incorporated (later renamed SGI).[1][2]
Akeley developed the frame buffers and processor subsystems for the earlySGI IRIS series products and many of the CAD tools used to design these and other products. Akeley was instrumental[citation needed] in developing the graphics systems for the Power Series andOnyx systems, including the GTX, the VGX, and theRealityEngine. Akeley also led the design and documentation of theOpenGL graphics software specification, which was supported by Silicon Graphics and many other workstation and personal computer vendors.[citation needed]
In 1984, Akeley's colleagues at Silicon Graphics recognized his contributions by selecting him as the first overallSpirit of SGI award winner. Akeley later became Chief Engineer and then Vice President at SGI.
After leaving SGI in 2001, Akeley resumed his studies at Stanford University in the Stanford Computer Graphics Lab researching 3D display technology and earned a PhD inelectrical engineering in 2004.[3]
During this time, Akeley consulted atNVIDIA and collaborated on the design of theCg hardware shading languages forGPUs. He was also the editor (i.e., the paper chair) for theSIGGRAPH 2000 conference proceedings and a principal researcher atMicrosoft Research'sSilicon Valley lab. In September 2010 he became the CTO of a Silicon Valley start-up,Lytro.[4][5][6]
Akeley received the 1993 Distinguished Alumnus award from the Department of Electrical Engineering of the University of Delaware and was given a University of Delaware Presidential Citation for Outstanding Achievement in 1995.
Akeley received the 1995 SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award in recognition of his contributions to the architecture, design, and realization of high performance 3D graphics hardware systems.
In 1996, Akeley was inducted as a Fellow of theAssociation for Computing Machinery.
He is a member of theNational Academy of Engineering.
