October 4, 2004

Henrik Wann Jensen Named To List
Of “Brilliant 10” In Popular Science

By Doug Ramsey

On the heels of winning an Academy Award earlier this year for his groundbreaking work in computer graphics, Computer Science and Engineering professor Henrik Wann Jensen has now been honored by Popular Science. In its October 2004 issue, the magazine names Jensen to its list of the “Brilliant 10” – the best and the brightest among young scientists. The 2004 list is the third since the publication began compiling its annual honor roll. (To read the Popular Science article.)

All 10 of the honored scientists are 40 or younger. The 34-year-old Jensen is cited for his work in computer graphics. “Jensen realized that surfaces don't just reflect light, but absorb it,” reports the magazine. “He has taken that absorption and translated it into digital code for graphics. His expertise was seen by audiences in Terminator 3, Shrek 2, the Lord of the Rings films and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.” At the 2004 Academy Awards, Jensen received a Technical Achievement Award for his pioneering research in rendering translucent materials, notably skin.

Other scientists keeping Jensen company on the Brilliant 10 list were drawn from a wide range of scientific fields, including biomechanics, high-impact physics, planetary science, glaciology, laser physics, DNA-based chemistry, neuroscience, and evolutionary ecology. Two honorees each came from UC Berkeley, Princeton and the Southwest Research Institute. Other institutions on the list: Harvard, the University of Arizona, and Cold Spring Harbor Lab.

Jensen was honored recently with a Sloan Fellowship and is establishing a computer graphics lab at UCSD with a research focus on realistic image synthesis, global illumination, rendering of natural phenomena, and appearance modeling. His contributions to computer graphics include the photon mapping algorithm for global illumination and the first technique for efficiently simulating subsurface scattering in translucent materials. He is the author of "Realistic Image Synthesis Using Photon Mapping," AK Peters 2001.

Prior to coming to UCSD in 2002, Jensen was a research associate at Stanford University 1999-2002, a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 1998-1999, and a research scientist in industry working on commercial rendering software 1996-1998. He received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Technical University of Denmark in 1996 for developing the photon mapping method.

Media Contacts: Doug Ramsey (858) 822-5825