LOS ALAMITOS, Calif., 25, February, 2008--Computational scientists Ron Fedkiw and Frank Losasso Petterson, whose article on fluid dynamics will be featured in an upcoming issue of IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, were among the half-dozen scientists recognized at Sunday’s Academy awards. 

The pair were given a plaque for Industrial Light & Magic’s fluid-simulation system, along with Nick Rasmussen, who has also published articles in Computer Society proceedings and magazines over the years. Their production-proven simulation system achieves large-scale water effects within ILM’s Zeno framework. It includes integrating particle level sets, parallel computation, and tools that enable the artistic direction of the results.

 Fedkiw is an associate professor in computer science at Stanford University who has been consulting with ILM since 2000. He holds a PhD in mathematics from University of California, Los Angeles. Petterson earned a doctorate in computer science from Stanford in 2007, with Fedkiw as his advisor. 

Their article, “Two-way Coupled SPH and Particle Level Set Fluid Simulation,” can be found at http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/TVCG.2008.37. The IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphic (www.computer.org/tvcg) is a bimonthly scholarly journal that strives to publish important research results and state-of-the-art seminal papers within the field of computer graphics and visualization techniques. 

Together, the trio have visual-effects credits for “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith,” “Poseidon,” “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines,” and “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.”

Besides the ILM trio, Doug Roble, Nafees Bin Zafar, and Ryo Sakaguchi also won an engineering and scientific award for the development of the fluid-simulation system at Digital Domain. The influential and flexible production-proven system incorporates innovative algorithms and refined adaptations of published methods to achieve large-scale water effects.