Greg Turk

Infobox academic
name = Greg Turk
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birth_date = 1961
birth_place = Chapel Hill, NC
death_date =
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residence = Atlanta, Georgia
citizenship = United States
nationality = United States
ethnicity = WASP
field = Computer Graphics
work_institutions = Georgia Institute of Technology
alma_mater = University of California, Los Angeles
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known_for = The Stanford Bunny; being an insanely nice guy
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prizes = Technical Paper Chair, Siggraph 2008
religion = Unlikely
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Greg Turk is an American-born researcher in the field of computer graphics and an Associate Professor at Georgia Tech. His paper "Zippered polygon meshes from range images," concerning the reconstruction of surfaces from point data, introduced the Stanford Bunny, a frequently used example object in computer graphics. He is also known for his work on simplification of surfaces, and on reaction-diffusion based texture synthesis.

Education

Turk received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill under the supervision of Henry Fuchs in 1992, and worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University from 1992 to 1994 before returning to UNC-Chapel Hill as a research professor from 1994 to 1996. He joined the Georgia Tech faculty in 1996. [ [http://www.gvu.gatech.edu/~greg.turk/ GVU Center: People: Greg Turk] .] The following year he was awarded an NSF CAREER Award, one of the most prestigious awards granted by the NSF to new faculty. [ [http://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/career/awards/fy97/97program.htm NSF Career Awards 1997] ] He is the technical papers chair of SIGGRAPH 2008. [ [http://www.siggraph.org/s2008/submissions/juried/papers/ SIGGRAPH 2008: Call for papers] ]

Personal life

Turk was born in 1961, and grew up in Southern California. He attended Santa Monica High School in the 1970s, where he was a member of the nonmusical group "The Olive Starlight Orchestra," along with David Linden, David Coons, Sandra Tsing Loh, Susan Crawford, Eric Enderton, and Jan Steckel. He performed his undergraduate work at UCLA, where he was unable to get into the Computer Science program, and studied mathematics instead; this led to hand-writing among his friends to the effect that he wouldn't be able to make a "contribution" as a math major in the same way he might in CS. The concern was proven ... false (and, of course, a bit ironic). Dr. Turk has become a luminary in the world of computer graphics, and a mentor to many students in that field.

Turk played guitar in a short-lived band while he attended UCLA; it called itself "Industrial Waist," and also featured Jack Watt (on drums; he was Jackie Watt back then), mathematician and teacher Paul Lockhart (lead vocals, guitar), Rhythm and Hues Studios co-founder Keith Goldfarb (bass player), and Alex Melnick (the band's original drummer).

As a former mathematician, Turk is a fan of Lewis Carroll, and for many years his trademark was a Cheshire Cat grin; later, he fell in love with fractals, to the point that his alter ego on Joy McCann's blog is "Professor Fractal." He has been called "the only truly nice guy left in the universe," and lives in Atlanta with his wife, his daughter, and his son. He and David Linden squabble about who the better father is, with each suspecting that the other has the edge; they are both said to be passionately devoted to their children.

elected publications

*Turk G, Levoy M. (1994) Zippered polygon meshes from range images. In: "Proceedings of the 21st Annual Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques", pp. 311–318 (ISBN 0-89791-667-0) (cited 627 times) [http://scholar.google.co.uk Google Scholar] search for "Greg Turk", 3 February 2008]
*Turk G. (1992) Re-tiling polygonal surfaces. "ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics" 26: 55–64 (cited 576 times)
*Cohen J, Varshney A, Manocha D, Turk G "et al". (1996) Simplification envelopes. In: "Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques", pp. 119–128 (ISBN 0-89791-746-4) (cited 464 times)

References

External links

* [http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~turk/ Greg's homepage]
* [http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/t/Turk:Greg.html Greg Turk's publications] at DBLP.
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