Sandy Ressler

Mr. Ressler est actuellement chercheur dans le domaine de la visualisation en informatique pour divers applications scientifiques à l’institut national de standads et technologie (NIST) où il travaille depuis vingt ans.
Il travaillait déjà à la conception d’animations pour ordinateurs dans l’âge de pierre des années 70 alors qu’il effectuait un master en arts.

Mr. Ressler is currently performing research into information visualization for a variety of scientific applications at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) where he has been for over twenty five years. Prior to NIST he was at a video game startup, and at Bell Labs. During his over thirty year career he has always been involved in interactive computer graphics.  His research work appears frequently in a variety of scientific and technical venues, and his columns, editorials, and articles have chronicled Web3D standards and contributed to the field of Digital Human Modeling.
Mr. Ressler is a pioneer and visionary in the development of 3D computer graphics for use on the Internet, primarily via work with the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML), the ISO standard for 3D on the World Wide Web. Over the last ten years, Ressler has been one of the central figures in this field.  He was on the Web3D  Consortium’s Board of Directors for  6 years, two of which as Vice President. This organization is responsible for both VRML and X3D, its successor. Ressler has been a leader, ensuring that the X3D standard has moved through to completion. From 1997-2001, he created and ran the world’s leading web site for 3D on the web at About.com.
Ressler’s activities as co-chair and program committee member of a  series of Web3D Symposiums and his running of several Web3D Showcase events (demonstration events) at SIGGRAPH (the premier conference for the computer graphics industry) has exposed tens of thousands of people to Web3D applications. Nearly 3000 people attended Ressler’s  highly successful “demo” event for industry during 2004. Ressler has also been a leader in applying visualizations for 3D anthropometry (human measurement) data, resulting in safer children’s products. His more recent work with Web3D has involved broadening it's applicability for medical imaging, co-chairing a working group on medical extensions to X3D. He is widely regarded as one of the leading figures in the industry as illustrated by articles in the press including the NY Times, Federal Computer Week, and Popular Mechanics. Ressler has also authored three books, two on electronic publishing and coauthored the classic "Life with UNIX".
Ressler's formal education is in the visual arts with an MFA degree when he produced computer animation in the stone ages of the mid 70s.