May 2010

Walt Disney officially opens research lab in Zürich

Since the end of April, the Disney laboratory «Disney Research Zurich (DRZ)» at the ETH Zurich is officially open.

Currently, 20 computer scientists and eight PhD students are working at DRZ on 35 different research projects that are not only aimed at Walt Disney’s animation studios, but intended for all group divisions including Disney’s theme parks, e.g.

One of the DRZ’s key areas is animation and modeling of human faces. To this aim, a DRZ research group has already developed a facial scanner capable of transferring highly subtle differences of human mimic into computer animated representation.

The joint venture between Disney and ETH Zurich is one of its kind in Europe: Disney pays the wages, while ETH Zurich provides the infrastructure. Roland Siegwart, Vice-President of Research and Corporate Relations at ETH Zurich, put the collaboration on a par with several of ETH Zurich’s strategic industrial partnerships, such as the IBM research lab in Rüschlikon.

According to Ed Catmull, co-founder of DRZ and current President of Pixar Animation Studios, European scientists have always been notable for innovation and creativity in the computer graphics sector. This was an important factor to partner with the ETH Zurich. Moreover, in Markus Gross, professor at ETH Zurich, they found a first president of DRZ who is a highly creative expert in technology development himself with a broad network of committed researchers. All in all, ETH Zurich offered «an ideal environment for a research cooperation.»

Please see also: IBM and ETH Zurich lay foundation stone for new nanotechnology lab

www.disneyresearch.com
graphics.ethz.ch

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