The Asia Graphics Association (AG) is proud to announce the winner of the first Outstanding Technical Contributions Award (2018). This award is to recognize an individual for an outstanding technical achievement in computer graphics, made in an Asiagraphics country. The winner of this award was selected by the award jury chaired by Prof. Ming Lin (UMD College Park) and Prof. Leif Kobbelt (RWTH Aachen) and the Award Jury has come to the unanimous decision. The winner received his certificate on 16th December, during the ACM SIGGRAPH ASIA 2018 held in Tokyo, Japan.

The 2018 AG’s Outstanding Technical Contributions Award was presented to Dr. Baining Guo, who joined Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) in 1999. Now he is the distinguished engineer in MSRA. As an outstanding graphics researcher and senior leader in the graphics community, Dr. Baining Guo not only advances the state-of-the-art of computer graphics research with a series of ground-breaking research works, but also makes significant contributions to the development of the graphics research community in Asia.

After joining MSRA in 1999, Dr. Baining Guo quickly built a strong graphics research group in Beijing. He also conducted a set of programs (e.g. visiting researchers, internships, fellowships, research grants, etc) to enhance the collaborations with other graphics researchers in Asia. With his outstanding leadership, these programs greatly prompt the graphics research in Asia countries and cultivate a group of prestigious young graphics researchers in Asia.

Dr. Baining Guo’s research covers almost all research areas in computer graphics, including realistic rendering, texture synthesis, appearance modeling, geometric processing, as well as visualization. His prestigious research in these areas lead to 150+ papers published in top graphics journals and conferences, including 64 SIGGRAPH/SIGGRAPH ASIA papers. His papers have been cited more than 12,000 times and the H-index is 59.

Dr. Baining Guo worked actively in the community and played an important role in variant academic activities in Asia. He served as the program co-chair of PG09, paper chair of SIGGRAPH ASIA 2014. He also served in the Pacific Graphics steering board, SIGGRAPH ASIA advisory committee, and SIGGRAPH ASIA paper advisory board.

Due to his excellent research work and academic service, he was elected as an IEEE Fellow in 2010, with the citation: “For contributions to surface appearance modeling and rendering in computer graphics”, elected as an ACM Fellow with the citation: “For contributions to computer graphics”, and elected as the Canadian Academy of Engineering Fellow, 2014.