Awardee:  Kun Zhou

Kun Zhou is a Cheung Kong Professor in the Computer Science Department of Zhejiang University, and the Director of the State Key Lab of CAD&CG. Prior to joining Zhejiang University, he worked at Microsoft Research Asia for six years. He received his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Zhejiang University in 1997 and 2002, respectively.

Prof. Zhou's  research interests are in visual computing and virtual reality. He has published more than 100 papers on peer-reviewed conferences and journals, including 70+ papers in ACM/IEEE Transactions, with 5000+ citations. He currently serves on the editorial/advisory boards of ACM Transactions on Graphics, IEEE Spectrum, Frontiers of Computer Science and three other journals. He was named one of the world's top 35 young innovators by MIT Technology Review in 2011. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.
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Award-winning achievement: Efficient Parallel Rendering of Photorealistic Graphics

Abstract：Real-time, photorealistic rendering of large-scale scenes is the key supporting technology of many applications such as virtual reality, cultural and creative industries. It is also a grand challenge for modern computer graphics research. One effective solution to address this challenge is to perform parallel rendering on GPU hardware and rebuild the rendering pipeline. This requires significant changes to the traditional graphics data structure, rendering algorithms and pipelines. Prof. Kun Zhou proposed parallel construction and accessing methods for data structures widely used in photorealistic graphics, established the parallel photorealistic rendering pipeline suitable for GPU hardware, designed efficient GPU parallelization methods for classical rendering algorithms, and developed parallel photorealistic rendering software with independent intellectual property rights. These works, for the first time, demonstrated the feasibility of realizing movie-quality photorealistic rendering at interactive speeds, led the research direction of GPU-based parallel photorealistic rendering in academic circles, and laid the foundation for industrial development of GPU-based photorealistic rendering systems.