Presenter

Jernej Barbic is a Professor at USC, where his research focuses on computer animation, graphics, simulation, mechanics, medical imaging, and haptics. Jernej received his PhD in Computer Science from CMU in 2007, followed by a post-doc at MIT CSAIL. His work is broadly used in film industry, computer games, aerospace and automotive manufacturing, virtual medicine, and surgery simulation. He was also a co-founder and CTO of a successful computer animation startup company "Ziva Dynamics" (acquired by Unity Technologies), whereby he contributed technical and business leadership on real-time character deformation, anatomically based modeling, nonlinear elasticity and digital humans. He was named a Sloan Research Fellow and a Top 35 Innovator under 35 in the world (MIT TR35). In 2025, he received an Academy Award for Scientific and Technical Achievement ("SciTech Oscar") for his work in film industry.