SIGGRAPH Pioneers Mentoring

Association Computing Machinery, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

This is funding to support high school student involvement and attendance at the next three ACM SIGGRAPH conferences (2015-2017). SIGGRAPH is the premier computer graphics conference in the world, attracting over 15,000 attendees annually and filling over 100,000 feet of exhibition space. The conference film show is a renowned venue for viewing the latest advances in animation and visualization. Although many attendees come just for the exhibition and film show, the conference has long been the premier forum for publishing and presenting technical papers in computer graphics. The SIGGRAPH Pioneers (20+ years of work in the field) started a mentoring program in 2003 with the goal of adding more students to the technology pipeline by exposing them to this exciting research at a young age. While the number of student participants each year is relatively small in number, the impact has been high because the students do not merely attend the conference but rather are mentored by senior members of the community on a personal basis; each Pioneer is assigned no more than two students, and guides them to talks, courses, etc. that may not have been on the student's radar. The intellectual merit and broader impact of this activity lie in the educational opportunities afforded to the high school students by the mentoring process. The program also focuses on underrepresented groups (e.g., women, Hispanics, and African Americans) who would have no opportunity to hear about SIGGRAPH, let alone attend, without the mentoring program. The students are exposed to the latest research and hardware covering the use of computer graphics for numerous topics that benefit society ranging from engineering design to entertainment. All of the money goes to the student participants; the mentors work purely on a volunteer basis, and the submitting organization imposes no charges or indirect costs. Written student feedback has, in the past, been extremely favorable.