Shiro Kawai

STRONG SKILLS

1. Experience of designing and developing software related to CGI industry, including:
   • Real-time CG application for live entertainment, using SGI, PlayStation2, and Windows 2000.
   • Asset management database system for full feature CG film project.
   • plug-ins for Alias|Wavefront Maya and Nichimen Graphics N-World.
   • stand-alone production support tools on Unix platforms.
2. Good knowledge on compiler systems and unix systems: experience of implementing parallel C compiler, Lisp/Scheme compiler/interpreter, database server/client systems, a special purpose NFS server, etc.
3. Experience of managing a small group (2-4 programmers) to develop custom ordered software products and research projects.
4. Experience of designing and developing hardware and firmware to support computer-human interaction, including assembly programming.
5. Fluent programming languages: C, C++, Common Lisp, Scheme, Perl, Java.

DEGREES

• Doctor of Engineering, from University of Tokyo, Japan (1996)
• Master of Electric Engineering, from University of Tokyo, Japan (1993)
• Bachelor of Electric Engineering, from University of Tokyo, Japan (1991)

EMPLOYMENT

October 2002 --
CTO, Scheme Arts L.L.C. (Honolulu)

April 2002 --
Individual Consultant, Software Engineering. (Honolulu)

As of October 2002, working on an "unexplored software creation project" funded by Informaton-technology Promotion Agency, Japan.

March 1996 -- March 2002
Senior Software Engineer, Square USA Inc. (Los Angeles, Honolulu)

As a member of Research & Development Department, I worked on the following projects.

• Designed and implemented a script interpreter and file/networking subsystem, and production framework for semi-realtime rendering, for a real-time high-quality rendering engine Dancer, running on SGI IRIX, PlayStation 2 and Windows. Part of the result was demonstrated at SIGGRAPH 2000 and 2001 Exhibition.
• Designed, developed and maintained the asset management and production management database system for a full-feature CG film production, "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within".
• Designed and implemented a gesture recognition interface for a demonstration game shown at SIGGRAPH 1997 Exhibition.
• Designed and created an interactive VRML content using procedural scene generation. Selected as one of the final candidates of the first VRML excellence award in 1997.
• Wrote a tool using OpenInventor to help the artists editing large polygonal terrain data for the game title "Final Fantasy VII".
• Wrote various plug-ins for Maya and Nichimen N-world to support movie and game productions.

June 1995 -- March 1996
Part-time Software Engineer, Fuji-Television CG Center (Tokyo).

Wrote an animation engine on SGI Onyx that drove a real-time rendering engine that was used for live TV broadcasting. Also designed and implemented an animation scripting language for it.

October 1990 -- March 1996
Part-time Consultant and Programmer, Nippon Techno Lab., Inc (Tokyo)

Developed applications and system software on various Unix platforms, including:

• Leading a team of 3 programmers, designed and developped a special NFS server with additional functionality such as implicit data archiving and extra search capability.
• Designed and wrote GUI for a networked color scanner/printer application using Motif.

June 1994 -- August 1995
Part-time Consultant and Systems Engineer

Leading a team of 4 programmers, designed and developed a database system on Windows 3.1 PC for small non-profit oranization which provides care services to elderly and disabled.

April 1993 -- March 1994
Teaching assistant

Supported undergraduate students to study programming courses, and evaluated their reports.

EDUCATION

Doctor of Engineering, March 1996.
Department of Electric Engineering, The University of Tokyo (Tokyo).

Thesis: A study on the user interface system with dynamic selectable modality.

Master of Electric Engineering, March 1993.
Department of Electric Engineering, The University of Tokyo (Tokyo).

Thesis: A compiler system for heterogeneous distributed shared memory.

Bachelor of Electric Engineering, March 1991.
Department of Electric Engineering, The University of Tokyo (Tokyo).

OTHER RESEARCH PROJECT

April 1998
Program Committee of Assets 98, ACM SIGCAPH Conference on Assistive Technologies

Participated in the program committee of Assets 98, the third international conference on Assistive Technologies.

April 1993 -- September 1995
A research project funded by Japanese Ministry of Education

Participated in a group of 20 researchers/students. Responsible for implementing a translator from parallel C language to the C language on SIMD parallel computer (AP-1000).

Publications

• Shiro Kawai, "Tracking Assets in the Production of 'Final Fantasy : The Spirits Within'", in Proceedings of Game Developers Conference 2002, San Jose, March 19-23, 2002. (html).
• Shiro Kawai, "Shooting A Moving Target---An Experience in Developing a Production Tracking Database", in Proceedings of Japan Lisp User Group Meeting, Tokyo, May 2000. (pdf), (html).
• Shiro Kawai, Hitoshi Aida and Tadao Saito, "Designing Interface Toolkit with Dynamic Selectable Modality", in Proceedings of Assets '96, the Second International ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies, pp. 72--79, Vancouver, April 1996.

OTHER ACTIVITIES

Jan. 2000 -- Now

Running an open-source project to build a production-ready Scheme script engine. http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/gauche/

Oct. 1987 -- May 1991
Actor and Stage Manager

Actor and Stage Manager in Japan.