Dan B Goldman

My research spans computer graphics, computer vision, artificial intelligence, and human-computer interaction.

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I'm a principal engineeer and AI/ML architect for Lucasfilm & ILM, and an affiliate associate professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. I spent the first 12 years of my career working in production and software roles at ILM, and I am a proud member of the Visual Effects Society. After completing my PhD thesis in 2007, developing interfaces for browsing, dynamic annotation, and visualization of video, I joined Adobe's Creative Technologies Lab, where I created techniques for inpainting and reshuffling image contents. These became the Content-Aware Fill family of features in Adobe Photoshop. I joined Google in late 2015, where I created and led the computer vision R&D team for Project Starline, developing high-fidelity real-time 3D human capture and rendering technology for the future of communication. From '22 to '24 I led a project for Google Labs in generative media.

Thanks to my unique combination of careers, my Erdős-Bacon number is at most 6. If you are either a) a co-author of Paul Erdős looking for a research collaborator, or b) Kevin Bacon's agent looking for a co-star: please contact me immediately. (Proof: B = 2 via Rose Byrne appearing in both Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones and X-Men: First Class; E = 4, various paths, but most reliably via David Salesin, Leo Guibas, and Richard Pollack.) My academic genealogy includes Donald Knuth, David Hilbert, and Sophus Lie.

These videos discuss some of my past research projects in layperson's terms!

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Journals and conference proceedings

PhD Thesis

Other publications

Credits

Production Software Engineer, The Flintstones, 1994
Digital Effects Artist (TD), Mission: Impossible, 1996
Digital Effects Artist (TD), Dragonheart, 1996
Digital Effects Artist (TD), 101 Dalmatians, 1996
Digital Effects Artist (TD), Men In Black, 1997
Sequence Supervisor, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, 1999
Computer Graphics Supervisor, Galaxy Quest, 1999
Computer Graphics Supervisor, The Perfect Storm, 2000
Computer Graphics Supervisor (R&D), Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, 2002

I've also done uncredited production work on Strange Days (1995), software development for Jurassic Park (1993), Peter Pan (2003), and Star Wars Episode III (2005), and consulting for Van Helsing (2004).

Invited Talks & Interviews

Artificial Intelligence 101, Seattle Intellectual Property American Inn of Court, Burke Museum of Natural History, January 18, 2024.
Dan Goldman, 8111 podcast, March 21, 2022.
High-fidelity real-time 3D capture and rendering, Apple Computer, September 5, 2019.
High-fidelity real-time 3D capture and rendering, Amazon, June 26, 2019.
High-fidelity real-time 3D capture and rendering, University of Washington ACM Seminar, March 12, 2019.
High-fidelity real-time 3D capture and rendering, Northeastern University, February 8, 2019.
Non-parametric image optimization, Mathematics, Computer Graphics, and Film Production, Joint Mathematics Meeting, January 13, 2013.
Non-parametric image optimization & Crowdsourcing gaze data collection, Microsoft Research Cambridge, July 24, 2012.
Non-parametric image optimization & Crowdsourcing gaze data collection, Imperial College London, July 12, 2012.
Non-parametric image optimization, London Graphics Seminar, June 11, 2012.
Interactive video visualization and navigation & Crowdsourcing gaze data collection, University of Washington computer vision seminar, April 11, 2012.
Interactive video visualization and navigation & Crowdsourcing gaze data collection University of Washington DUB seminar, February 15, 2012.
Image and video manipulation, Keynote, SPIE Media Forensics, January 25, 2011.
The PatchMatch image correspondence algorithm and applications, University of Colorado Applied Math seminar, May 2010.
Creativity, inspirations, processes, Creativity seminar, University of Maine, December 2009.
Real-time interaction for video manipulation, International workshop on vision, Barcelona, May 2009.
Rethinking digital video, Laika animation, August 15, 2007.

Dan B or Daniel R.?

My middle name starts with R. However, many years ago I had a nickname starting with the initial B. Around that time I started using the middle initial as part of my "stage name" — but without a period, just to confuse people a little bit. When I started publishing I continued using this as my nom de plume on academic publications. Sadly, the University of Washington using aliases for thesis authorship, and at the time I submitted the final draft I wasn't in a position to fight about it. So the thesis – and, for similar reasons, most of my screen credits – do not include the middle B.

danbgoldman.com