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Andrew A. Kaufman



Canada:    1305 W 12th Avenue | Apt 404 | Vancouver, BC, Canada V6H1M3 |
U.S.A.:      1961 W. Hidden Reserve Court | Mequon, WI, USA 53092 |

To work for a visual effects company, in research and development or production, focusing on physical simulation.

Programming: C/C++, Python, MEL, Maya API, Java, OpenGL, tcsh, CommonLisp, Visual Basic, HTML, JavaScript.
Multimedia: Maya, Houdini, Nuke, SolidWorks, Blender, Photoshop, After Effects, Flash, Dreamweaver, Final Cut, Poser.

S. Sueda, A. Kaufman, D. K. Pai. 2008. “Musculotendon Simulation for Hand Animation”, In ACM Transactions
on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2008),Volume 27, Issue 3, Pages 83:1-83:8, Aug 2008.

A. Kaufman, S. Sueda, D. K. Pai. 2008. “Dynamic Shoulder Simulation Using Musculoskeletal Strands”, In
Proceedings of ISG 2008: Shoulder biomechanics in medicine, ergonomics, and sport, July 2008.

Image Engine Design Inc., Vancouver, BC, Canada                            September 2009 – Present
Research & Development Programmer – Major projects include integrating hair dynamics with our proprietary grooming system, maintaining and contributing to the open source visual effects project “cortex-vfx”, and facility wide Houdini integration.

Image Engine Design Inc., Vancouver, BC, Canada                            September 2008 – September 2009
Junior R & D Programmer – Major projects included a python interface and GUI for manipulating Renderman compliant render passes; upgrading, maintaining, and building a GUI for our proprietary dynamic simulation software; render farm management of batch renders and networked preview renders; a tool allowing artists to view current work in place with cuts from editorial.

Recon Instruments Inc., Vancouver, BC, Canada                            February 2008 – August 2008
Industrial Design Coordinator – In charge of virtual prototyping, style design, technical modeling, and user interface design for multi-functional, wearable technology in competitive sporting environments. I am a member of the technical design team and I report directly to the president of the company.

Sensorimotor Systems Lab, Vancouver, BC, Canada                       Summer 2007 – Present
Graduate Research Assistant – Developing a musculoskeletal simulation of the human upper limb using a strand-based muscle system; seamless integration of biomechanically realistic secondary motion into a traditional animation pipeline; created custom interfaces for the modeling of musculoskeletal systems; extended the simulation code base.

University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada                   Fall 2006 – Winter 2007
Graduate Teaching Assistant – Developing, running, and grading labs; holding office hours; developing, proctoring, and grading quizzes and exams; guiding and grading several group projects; and giving an occasional guest lecture.

Tomorrow Lab, Evanston, IL                                                        Summer 2005 – Winter 2006
Research Assistant – MEL scripting for the visualization of complex molecular models; gained experience writing MEL procedures, creating custom interfaces for specific user groups, solving real world research problems, and documenting them as research papers.

ArticuLab, Evanston, IL                                                               Summer 2005 – Fall 2005
Animator – Responsible for animating a virtual character designed for collaborative storytelling with children. Improved the animation pipeline of the embodied conversational agent by reworking the connection between animation software and the code base; helped develop an automatic real-time lip syncing system based on pre-made viseme animations and phonemes extracted from audio files.

Cognition and Language Lab, Evanston, IL                                    Summer 2004 – Spring 2006
Computer Technician – Managed a network of 16 computers; fix, upgrade, and install hardware and software; maintain backup systems; program experiments to be run both in the lab and around the world.

Mathematica Policy Research Inc., Princeton, NJ                           Summer 2003
Supervisor’s Assistant – Updated the databases of research data for several projects; processed finalized surveys and maintained records for multiple projects; did research to locate specific PhD candidates; took and directed calls from doctors and medical directors for medical policy research; organized the working hours for a group of employees.

Simulated Control for Balancing, Computer Animation                    Winter 2008
Developed a controller for stabilizing the center of mass of an articulated character. Demonstrated the versatility of the balance controller with a range of simulated scenarios, including the effects of noise, reacting to projectiles, and the use of unstable and inclined ground surfaces.

Planar Matchmove, Computer Vision                                            Winter 2007
Implemented a planar version of the matchmove problem. The matchmove problem involves inserting computer graphics into real images. The implementation provides a matchmove pipeline that can be used in post production.

iFree, Human Computer Interaction                                               Fall 2006
Designed and developed a prototype MP3 player that is accessible to people with visual disabilities. Conducted a user study with visually disabled subjects, indicating that visually disabled users are fully capable of using iFree.

Skewed Time, Animate Arts Senior Project                                     Winter & Spring 2006
Wrote a custom video filter to experiment with the relationship between time and space. This artwork was exhibited in Chicago throughout October 2006 in the show Structural Elements: Selected Chicago New Media Artists.

Information, Animate Arts IV                                                      Winter 2006
Modeled, animated, and rendered a 3D animated short based on a Rube Goldberg machine. Used Alias Maya's physics engine to perform the rigid body collisions that drive the motion throughout the short.

Mime and Punishment, Animation Studio                                      Fall 2005 & Winter 2006
Spent the fall developing a story, creating storyboards, modeling, and rigging the characters. Spent the winter instructing a group of animators to create a 3D animated short film ready for submission to animation festivals. 

Virtual Interactive Environment, Illustrated Worlds                       Spring 2005
The goal of this project was to reconstruct a 3D architectural model of the Chicago Midway Gardens. We used non-photorealistic rendering techniques to visualize uncertainty in the model, and finalized the design with Alias Maya.

Glare Removal, Independent Study                                              Fall 2004
The goal of this project was to be able to remove excess glare from high dynamic range images in order to make them seem more realistic; gained experience working on the research side of computer graphics.

Image Morphing Demo, Image Based Modeling & Rendering              Spring 2004
Created a graphical user interface to demonstrate the differences between the leading methods of image morphing.

Autonomous Robot, Northwestern Design Competition                     Winter & Spring 2004
Organized and lead an eclectic group of experts to design, build, and use an autonomous robot in competition; responsible for the electronic and programmed portions of the robot.

Leaf blower Backpack, Engineering Design & Communication              Spring 2003
Learned to work in a small team to bring a client’s idea to creation; gained a thorough knowledge of the entire engineering design process; improved abstract thinking skills involved in solving a design problem.

Exhibited Chicago New Media Artist 2006; ACM SIGGRAPH Member since 2005; Dean’s List: Spring 2006, Winter 2006, Fall, Spring & Winter 2005; Phi Gamma Delta Fraternity, 2002-2006; Northwestern University Men’s Club Ice Hockey, 2002-2003; Skiing, Hiking, Camping, Travel, Musculoskeletal Simulation, Physically-based Simulation, Simulation of Natural Phenomena, Animation, Film, Sculpture, Installation Art, Interactive Media.