Eric Veach is a Canadian computer scientist, and who won a technical Academy Award.[1][2]
He won his 2014 academy award for work in colour perception, as applied to computer graphics, described in his 1997 PhD thesis.[1][3]He told CTV News he hadn’t done any work in computer graphics for 15 years. Veach had worked at Pixar, but, more recently, he had been a senior developer at Google.[2]
His PhD thesis, Robust Monte Carlo Methods for Light Transport Simulation, is highly cited.[3]
In 2008, the University of Waterloo, the institution where he earned his Bachelor of Mathematics, in 1990, awarded him a J. W. Graham Medal, an annual award granted to a distinguished alumnus who had studied computer science there.[2] His PhD is from Stanford University.
Veach is a strong believer in environmental causes and served as the vice-chair of the Rainforest Trust.[4]
Farhad Manjoo named Veach and two of his non-American colleagues, at Google, in an article entitled, “Why Silicon Valley Wouldn’t Work Without Immigrants”.[5] Manjoo’s article attempted to explain why newly inaugurated President Donald Trump‘s attempts to squeeze off the flow of immigrants to the USA was dangerous. He argued that America disproportionately benefitted from allowing big brained foreigners like Veach to find work.