Photo by Richard Kerris (all rights reserved)

Dr Alvy Ray Smith: Cofounded two successful startups: Pixar - see Pixar founding documents - (sold to Disney) and Altamira (sold to Microsoft). First director of computer graphics at Lucasfilm. Original member of the Computer Graphics Lab at the New York Institute of Technology. First Graphics Fellow at Microsoft. At Xerox PARC for the birth of the personal computer, the internet, and some of the earliest color pixels. Received two technical Academy Awards, for the alpha channel and digital paint systems. Invented the first full-color paint program and the HSV (or HSB) color transform, and co-invented the alpha channel. Directed the Genesis Demo in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Hired John Lasseter and directed him in The Adventures of André & Wally B. Proposed and negotiated the Academy-Award winning Disney computer animation production system, CAPS. Instrumental, as a Regent, in initiating the Visible Human Project at the National Library of Medicine. Star witness in a trial that successfully invalidated five patents that threatened Adobe Photoshop. Active in the development of the HDTV standard, arguing successfully for progressive scan. Holds Ph.D. from Stanford University and honorary doctorates from New Mexico State University and the New York Institute of Technology. Member of the National Academy of Engineering. Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Fellow of the American Society of Genealogists. Founding member of the Siggraph Academy. Published widely in theoretical computer science, computer graphics, and scholarly genealogy. Creator or co-creator of many pieces of computer art, including Sunstone in the collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art. Holds four patents. Published a book, A Biography of the Pixel, with MIT Press (3 Aug 2021). An advisor to Baobab Studios, an award-winning VR startup in Silicon Valley. For more details see <alvyray.com>.