Henrik Wann Jensen is an international leading researcher within Computer Graphics. He is, among other things, known for global illumination, photon mapping, and subsurface scattering, methods, which are used for rendering photo-realistic scenes in movies and pictures. To honour this work, he received an Academy Award (Technical Achievement Award) from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the methods to render the skin of Gollum from the Lord of the Rings movies.
Henrik Wann Jensen is originally from Aarhus and was a student at Marselisborg Gymnasium. He is now Chief Scientist of Luxion, which has offices in Aarhus and Orange County, California. Henrik Wann Jensen lives in Del Mar, but he often visits his family in Aarhus and the Danish department of Luxion, which is managed by his brother.
Henrik Wann Jensen has a PhD in Computer Science from DTU in 1996. He has been a Postdoc at MIT, a Research Associate at Stanford University, and has been Assistant, Associate and Full Professor (2002-2018) at the University of California, San Diego, where he is Professor Emeritus. He has also been a visiting Otto Mønsted Professor at DTU. He has been consultant for some of the most famous digital film producers Pixar (Steve Jobs), Weta (Peter Jackson, Lord of the Rings and James Cameron, Avatar). He now works as full-time Chief Scientist for Luxion, which develops the KeyShot tool, that is widely used for product visualization in areas such as design, advertisement, and architecture.
As Honorary Professor, Henrik Wann Jensen will contribute to strengthen the ties between the Department of Computer Science and Computer Graphics research both in industry and academia, and thus contribute to a possible recruitment to the area.