David Augustus Hart Lead Programmer for Avalanche Software SCI Staff Scientist, 1999-2000 www.dahart.com

David Hart is the focus of this quarter's SCI alumni highlight. David received his M.S. in Computer Science (Computer Graphics) from Cornell University, where he worked with Donald Greenberg on "Direct Illumination with Lazy Visibility Evaluation." After his Master's studies, David came to SCI as a Staff Scientist and collaborated with various SCI professors and scientists on remote visualization and volume rendering. While at SCI, David worked with fellow SCI alumnus Gordon Kindlmann on his paper "Strategies for Direct Volume Rendering of Diffusion Tensor Fields".

In 2000, David joined the production and animation team at PDI/DreamWorks as Effects Lead Developer & Artist. In this capacity, he developed shading, lighting, and particle tools, co-authored PDI's hair-styling and rendering system, and animated effects for hundreds of shots on seven different productions. David's film credits include Evolution, Shrek, Shrek II, and Madagascar.

Currently, he is a Lead Programmer for Avalanche Software, a subsidiary of Disney Interactive Studios based in Salt Lake, where he develops console video games. At Avalanche, he works on a wide range of interesting interactive and real-time systems including physics based gameplay, facial animation and game A.I. His growing list of game credits includes Cars 2, Ultimate Band and Meet the Robinsons, available on Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, among others.

David's interest in creating artwork based on artificial evolution began in graduate school, while procrastinating work on his thesis. He's been writing his software, called "blot" to create and evolve images on and off ever since. In 2007 he published "Toward Greater Artistic Control for Interactive Evolution of Images and Animation," which was awarded Best Paper at EvoMusArt. His images and animations have appeared in several art galleries and have been shown in Salt Lake, San Francisco, Valencia (Spain) and currently at the Jewett Art Gallery in Wellesly, MA.

David has an extensive list of game credits including Cars 2.	Blot - Evolutionary Generative Abstract Art.