An endowed lecture series established by the late Professor Emeritus Harry S. Kieval to bring important and renowned speakers to the Humboldt State University campus to deliver a lecture on some popular and/or broad aspect of mathematics which would be attractive to undergraduates and to the public. The lectures are held once each fall and spring.

Spring 2009 Kieval Lecture

Tony DeRose

Pixar Animation Studios

Thursday, February 5, 2009

"Math in the Movies" at 7:30 PM, Kate Buchanan Room

Film-making is undergoing a digital revolution brought on by advances in areas such as computer technology, computational physics, geometry,  and approximation theory. Using numerous examples drawn from Pixar's feature films, this talk will provide a behind the scenes look at the role that math plays in the revolution.

Tony will also give the colloquium talk the same day (Thursday, February 5) at 4 p.m. in BSS 166.

"Wavelets in Computer Graphics" at 4 PM, BSS 166

Wavelets are an important mathematical tool that has found uses in many scientific and engineering disciplines. They are an important technique for use in computer graphics and the closely related field of image processing. In this talk I'll provide an introduction to the theory of wavelets, and I'll highlight their use to solve a variety of computer graphics problems.


Tony DeRose is currently a Senior Scientist and lead of the Research Group at Pixar Animation Studios. He received a BS in Physics in from the University of California, Davis, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. From 1986 to 1995 Dr. DeRose was a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. In 1998, he was a major contributor to the Oscar winning short film "Geri's game", in 1999 he received the ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award, and in 2006 he received a Scientific and Technical Academy Award for his work on surface representations

Click here for a link to a poster with full details.

This is a link to the HSU library video records of the Kieval Lectures.

Previous lecturers in this series have included:

  • Underwood Dudley (details) Fall 2008 (DePauw University)
  • Don Albers, (details) Spring 2008 (Mathematical Association of America Books)
  • C. Edward Sandifer, (details) Fall 2007 (Western Connecticut State University)
  • Melanie Wood, (details), Spring 2007 (Princeton University)
  • Jerald Marsden, ( ), Fall 2006 (California Institute of Technology)
  • Deborah Ball, (details) , Spring 2006 (University of Michigan)
  • Majorie Senechal, (details), Fall 2005 (Smith College)
  • Joe Gallian, (details), Spring 2005 (University of Minnesota Duluth)
  • Jennifer Quinn, (details), Fall 2004 (Occidental College)
  • John Conway, (details), Spring 2004 (Princeton University)
  • Persi Diaconis (details), Fall 2003, (Stanford University)
  • Hyman Bass (details) ,Spring 2003 (U. of Michigan)
  • Ann E.Watkins  (details),Fall, 2002(CSU Northridge)
  • Ed Burger  (details), Spring, 2002 (Williams  College)
  • Michael E. Moody  (details ) Fall, 2001 (Harvey Mudd College)
  • Richard Tapia (details) Spring, 2001 ( Rice University)
  • Noam D. Elkies (details) Fall, 2000 (Harvard University)
  • Victor Katz (details) Spring, 2000 (University of the District of Columbia)
  • Arthur Benjamin (details) Fall, 1999 (Harvey Mudd College)
  • Thomas Banchoff (details)Spring, 1999 (Brown University)
  • Frank Giordano (details)  Fall, 1998 (COMAP)
  • Robert L. Devaney (Details) Spring, 1998 (Boston University)
  • Sherman Stein Fall, 1997 (UC Davis)
  • Ron Graham (Details ) Spring, 1997
  • David Hoffman Fall, 1996 (MSRI, Berkeley)
  • Doris Schattschneider Spring, 1996 (Moravian College)
  • Herbert Keller Fall, 1995 (Cal. Inst. of Technology)
  • Keith J. Devlin Spring, 1995 (Saint Mary's College)
  • Deb Hughes Hallett (Harvard) and Jerry Uhl  (U of Ill.) Fall, 1994
  • Gil Strang Spring, 1994 (MIT)
  • Carlos Castillo-Chavez Fall, 1993 (Cornell)
  • Judith Grabiner Spring, 1993 (Pitzer College).
  • Judith Tanur Fall, 1992 (SUNY, Stony Brook)
  • Margaret Cozzins Spring, 1992 (Northeastern U.)
  • Saunders MacLane Fall, 1991 (Univ. of Chicago)
  • Branko Grunbaum Spring, 1991 (Univ. of Washington)
  • Robert Moses Fall, 1990
  • George Dantzig Spring, 1990 (Stanford Univ.) 
  • Reuben Hersh Fall, 1989 (Univ. of NM)
  • Ralph Boas Spring, 1989 (Northwestern Univ.)
  • Leon Henkin Fall, 1988 (U.C., Berk.)
  • Mary Ellen Rudin Spring, 1988(Univ. of Wisconsin)
  • Constance Reid Fall, 1987
  • Kenneth Arrow Spring, 1987 (Stanford Univ.)
  • Peter Hilton Fall, 1986 (SUNY, Binghamton)
  • Gerard Debreu Spring, 1986 (U.C.,Berk.)
  • Raymond Smullyan Fall, 1985 (Ind. U.)
  • Paul Halmos Spring, 1985 (Univ.of Santa Clara)
  • Richard Hamming Winter, 1985 (Naval Postgrad.)
  • Victor Klee Spring, 1984 (Univ. of Washington)
  • Ivan Niven Fall, 1983 (Univ. of Oregon)
  • Ronald Graham Spring, 1983 (Bell Labs)