Editing Greg Turk

{{BLP sources|date=April 2010}}
{{Infobox scientist
| name              = Greg Turk
| image             =
| image_size        = 
| caption           = 
| birth_date        = July 21, 1961
| birth_place       = Durham, NC
| death_date        = 
| death_place       = 
| citizenship       = United States
| nationality       = American
| field             = Computer graphics
| work_institutions = [[Georgia Institute of Technology]]
| alma_mater        = University of California, Los Angeles
| doctoral_advisor  = 
| doctoral_students = 
| known_for         = [[Stanford bunny]]
| influences        = 
| influenced        = 
| prizes            = Technical Paper Chair, SIGGRAPH 2008 , ACM Computer Graphics Achievement Award 2012
| footnotes         =  
}}
'''Greg Turk''' is an American-born researcher in the field of [[computer graphics]] and a professor{{ambiguous|date=April 2020}} at the [[Georgia Institute of Technology School of Interactive Computing|School of Interactive Computing]] in the [[Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing|College of Computing]] at the [[Georgia Institute of Technology]] (Georgia Tech). His paper "Zippered polygon meshes from range images", concerning the reconstruction of surfaces from point data, brought the "[[Stanford bunny]]", a frequently used example object in computer graphics research, into the CGI lexicon. Turk actually purchased the original Stanford Bunny and performed the initial scans on it. He is also known for his work on simplification of surfaces, and on [[reaction–diffusion]]-based [[texture synthesis]]. In 2008, Turk was the technical papers chair of [[SIGGRAPH]] 2008.<ref>[http://www.SIGGRAPH.org/s2008/submissions/juried/papers/ SIGGRAPH 2008: Call for papers]</ref> In 2012, Greg Turk was awarded the ACM Computer Graphics Achievement Award 2012.<ref>{{cite web | publisher=ACM SIGGRAPH| title=2012 Computer Graphics Award announcement | url= http://www.SIGGRAPH.org/participate/awards|year=2012}}</ref>

==Education and computer graphics research==
After receiving his Ph.D. from the [[University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill]] under the supervision of [[Henry Fuchs]] in 1992, Turk was a postdoctoral researcher at [[Stanford University]] from 1992 to 1994 with [[Marc Levoy]] before he returned to UNC-Chapel Hill as a research professor from 1994 to 1996. He joined the Georgia Tech faculty in 1996.<ref>[http://www.gvu.gatech.edu/~greg.turk/ GVU Center: People: Greg Turk] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080213032557/http://www.gvu.gatech.edu/~greg.turk/ |date=2008-02-13 }}.</ref> The following year, Turk was awarded an [[National Science Foundation|NSF]] CAREER Award, one of the most prestigious awards granted by the NSF to new faculty.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/career/awards/fy97/97program.htm |title=NSF Career Awards 1997 |access-date=2018-04-06 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160305005905/https://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/career/awards/fy97/97program.htm |archive-date=2016-03-05 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

It was while at Stanford that he first brought the "Stanford bunny" back to the lab for scanning, which he recounts in a "had I but known" fashion:

{{blockquote|"One day, close to . . . Easter . . . I was out shopping on University Avenue near the Stanford campus.  . . . . On one of the shelves of [a] store was a large collection of clay bunny rabbits, all identical. I had range scanning on my mind, and these bunnies looked to be about the right shape and size for our . . .  project. Even better, these bunnies were made of terra cotta (red clay), so they were red and diffuse. I bought one of these bunnies. Had I known how popular the digital model would become, I would have bought many! I brought this clay bunny back to the Stanford Graphics Lab and scanned it from several directions. Using the methods that Marc and I [had] developed, I aligned a collection of ten such range scans to one another and merged them into a single polygonal mesh. The resulting model has come to be known as the Stanford Bunny. The original bunny still lives at Stanford."<ref>[http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~turk/bunny/bunny.html The Stanford Bunny]</ref>}}

==Personal life==
Turk was born in 1961, and grew up in Southern California. He attended [[Santa Monica High School]] in the 1970s, where he was a member of the nonmusical group "The Olive Starlight Orchestra", along with [[David J. Linden|David Linden]], Keith Goldfarb, [[David Coons]], [[Susan P. Crawford]], Eric Enderton and [[Jan Steckel]]. He did his undergraduate work at UCLA.

A guitarist in a short-lived band while he attended UCLA, Turk performed with the group as "Industrial Waist", which also had Jack Watt (on drums; formerly Jackie Watt before he transitioned), the mathematician and teacher [[Paul Lockhart (mathematician)|Paul Lockhart]] (lead vocals, guitar; Lockhart later became known for writing the internet sensation, and later book, ''[[A Mathematician's Lament]]''), the [[Rhythm and Hues Studios]] co-founder Keith Goldfarb (bass guitar player), and Alex Melnick (the band's original drummer). Turk and Lockhart were roommates in Santa Monica for a couple of years while they attended UCLA.

Turk lives in Atlanta.

==Notable publications==
Citations taken from his Google Scholar Profile (May 2014).<ref>{{cite web | author=Google Scholar | title=Google scholar profile of Greg Turk | url= https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=Q_4d9N0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao|date=May 2014}}</ref>

*Turk G, Levoy M. (1994) "Zippered polygon meshes from range images"<ref>{{Cite book |doi = 10.1145/192161.192241|chapter = Zippered polygon meshes from range images|title = Proceedings of the 21st annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques - SIGGRAPH '94|pages = 311–318|year = 1994|last1 = Turk|first1 = Greg|last2 = Levoy|first2 = Marc|isbn = 0897916670|s2cid = 3031529}}</ref> cited: 1254
*Turk G (1992) "Re-tiling polygonal surfaces"<ref>{{Cite journal |doi = 10.1145/142920.134008|title = Re-tiling polygonal surfaces|journal = ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics|volume = 26|issue = 2|pages = 55–64|year = 1992|last1 = Turk|first1 = Greg|doi-access = free}}</ref> cited: 1038
*Turk G (1991) "Generating textures on arbitrary surfaces using reaction–diffusion"<ref>{{Cite journal |doi = 10.1145/127719.122749|title = Generating textures on arbitrary surfaces using reaction-diffusion|journal = ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics|volume = 25|issue = 4|pages = 289–298|year = 1991|last1 = Turk|first1 = Greg}}</ref> cited: 517

== See also ==
* [[Turmite]]s

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
* [http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~turk/ Greg Turk's homepage]
* [http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/t/Turk:Greg.html Greg Turk's publications] at [[DBLP]].
* {{mathgenealogy|id=78253|name=Greg Turk}}
* [http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~turk/bunny/bunny.html The Stanford Bunny]

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[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:Georgia Tech faculty]]
[[Category:Computer graphics professionals]]
[[Category:University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumni]]
[[Category:1961 births]]