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WORK EXPERIENCE

  June 2010 - Present
Executive Director, Operations
Mindful Schools (Oakland, CA)
  • Responsible for overall business and strategic operations.
  • Responsible for business strategy, marketing, technology, messaging, task organization, and organizational structure.
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  July 2009 - June 2010
Director of Operations
Mindful Schools (Oakland, CA)
  • Responsible for business strategy, marketing, technology, messaging, task organization, and organizational structure.
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  September 2005 - July 2009
Developer Tools Product Manager
NVIDIA Corporation (Santa Clara, CA)
  • Responsible for managing, defining, marketing, and distributing award-winning tools that help GPU developers to create compelling applications.  Products include:
     
    PerfHUD. Features powerful edit-and-continue for shaders and render states, customizable graphs, DirectX 10 and Vista support, and much more.
       
    FX Composer. Features DirectX and OpenGL support via HLSL, Cg, and COLLADA FX, as well as powerful pipeline integration features for real production environments.
       
    Shader Debugger. Comprehensive debugging for pixel shaders, including watches, observe points, debugging single pixels or many pixels in parallel.
       
    NVIDIA Shader Library. The world's largest free shader library, featuring over 100 different shaders in various shading languages.
       
      ShaderPerf. Performance analysis for vertex and pixel shaders.

    Texture Tools. Now more than 10x faster with GPU acceleration via CUDA, and support for DirectX 10 texture formats.

  March 2002 - September 2005
Manager of Developer Education
NVIDIA Corporation (Santa Clara, CA)
  • Managed three different award-winning book projects:
    • The Cg Tutorial (as co-author) [2002]
    • GPU Gems (as editor) [2003]
    • GPU Gems 2 (as series editor) [2004]
  • Was responsible for project management for each book, including schedule, figures, review process, and communication with authors and editors -- each on a very tight schedule, and never missing a publication deadline. Each GPU Gems book had about 100 people involved, both inside and outside NVIDIA.
  • Managed content and logistics for educational sessions at SIGGRAPH 2003 and SIGGRAPH 2004 which were attended by approximately 1,000 people each year.
  • Responsible for one-to-many developer education efforts (teaching developers how to take advantage of the features and performance of the latest GPUs).
  • Responsible for managing developer events, online documentation, newsletters, and third party publishing.
     
  Spring 2001
Head Teaching Assistant
CS 417 & CS 418: Introduction to Computer Graphics
Cornell University (Ithaca, NY)
  • Responsible for running the course, including logistics, giving extra lectures, organizing homework and exams, etc.
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  Spring 2000
Teaching Assistant
CS 417 & CS 418: Introduction to Computer Graphics
Cornell University (Ithaca, NY)
  • Responsible for helping to run the course, office hours, grading homework, grading exams, and giving extra lectures.
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  Summer 1999
Intern in the Java Bean Group
Extreme Blue Program
IBM Corporation (Cambridge, MA)
  • Developed a Java bean called WebExtractor that extracts information from dynamically changing web pages.
  • Was mentioned in an article in Wired magazine.
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  Spring 1999
Teaching Assistant
CS 410: Data Structures
Cornell University (Ithaca, NY)
  • Responsible for designing and grading homework and grading exams.
  • Gave a guest lecture to wrap up the semester.
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  Summer 1998
Intern in the Advanced Graphics Division
 Silicon Graphics (Mountain View, CA)
  • Worked on SGI’s next-generation high-end graphics architecture (included micro-code as well as OpenGL pipeline work and testing).
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  Summer 1997
Lecturer
Asia-Pacific Computer College (Manila, Philippines)

  • Taught HTML and JavaScript.
     
 

Summer 1997
Web Developer
Siemens-Nixdorf Philippines and ShoeMart, Philippines

  • Developed Web pages for two major companies in the country.

PUBLICATIONS

  GPU Gems 2: Programming Techniques for High-Performance Graphics and General-Purpose Computation
Edited by Matt Pharr
Randima Fernando, Series Editor
March 2005

GPU Gems 2 was the best-selling book at the Game Developers Conference 2005 as well as SIGGRAPH 2005. It covers advanced graphics programming techniques as well as how to use the massive computational power of GPUs for other applications such as scientific computing and finance. GPU Gems 2 has been very well received by developers and was a Game Developer Magazine Front Line Award finalist in 2005. The book has been translated into Japanese and Chinese.
     
  GPU Gems: Programming Techniques, Tips, and Tricks for Programmable Graphics
Edited by Randima Fernando
March 2004

GPU Gems was the best-selling book at the Game Developers Conference 2004 as well as SIGGRAPH 2004. It covers advanced computer graphics for real-time applications using GPUs. GPU Gems has been very well received by the developers, winning a Game Developer Magazine Front Line Award in 2004. The book has been translated into Japanese and Chinese.
     
  The Cg Tutorial: The Definitive Guide to Programmable Real-Time Graphics
Randima Fernando and Mark J. Kilgard
March 2003

The Cg Tutorial was the best-selling book at the Game Developer Conference in 2003 as well as SIGGRAPH 2003. It held the top spot in Barnes & Noble’s "Computer Graphics" rankings for most of 2003. It has been used by many universities around the world and has been translated into Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Polish. At the Game Developers Conference 2005, Sony Computer Entertainment announced that Cg will be used as the shading language for the Sony PLAYSTATION 3.
     
 

Integrating Realistic Soft Shadows into Your Game Engine
Kevin Myers, Randima Fernando, and Louis Bavoil
NVIDIA Whitepaper - December 2007

This whitepaper explains how to easily integrate an efficient method for creating realistic soft shadows (Percentage-Closer Soft Shadows) on DirectX 10 and high-end DirectX 9 GPUs. The technique is used in many shipping games, as illustrated by the image at left showing it in the game Hellgate: London, developed by Flagship Studios. Each character's shadow varies in softness depending on the character's relationship with the ground.
     
 

Percentage-Closer Soft Shadows
Randima Fernando - August 2005
SIGGRAPH 2005 Sketch

Realistic soft shadows provide valuable cues about relationships between objects, becoming sharper at contact and more blurry (softer) the further they are apart. This sketch presents Percentage-Closer Soft Shadows (PCSS), a new method for generating perceptually accurate soft shadows. It requires no pre- or post-processing, nor additional geometry.  PCSS seamlessly replaces a traditional shadow map query (embodying the same advantages: independent of scene complexity, works with alpha testing, displacement mapping, and so on).  It runs fast on recent GPUs, and is used by many shipping games.
     
 

The GeForce 6 Series Architecture
 Emmett Kilgariff and Randima Fernando
GPU Gems 2, Chapter 30

This chapter describes the architecture of the GeForce 6 Series GPUs from NVIDIA. We start with a general overview of where the GPU fits into the overall computer system, and then we describe the architecture along with details of specific features and performance characteristics.
     
 

Adaptive Shadow Maps
Randima Fernando et al.
SIGGRAPH 2001 Paper

This paper introduces the Adaptive Shadow Map (ASM) as a solution to shadow map aliasing. An ASM resolves pixel size mismatches between the eye view and the light source view by creating higher-resolution pieces of the shadow map as needed. ASMs enable dramatic improvements in shadow quality while maintaining interactive frame rates.
     
 

Masters Thesis
Randima Fernando

This thesis presents two adaptive, GPU-accelerated algorithms for shadow generation. The first algorithm, called Adaptive Shadow Maps, removes aliasing artifacts that typically result when using shadow maps. The second algorithm, called Adaptive Soft Shadows, attempts to generate soft shadows efficiently by varying the number of light samples used for different regions of the scene.

EDUCATION

  Masters Degree in Computer Graphics (Mar 2002)
Cornell University Program of Computer Graphics Ithaca, NY
GPA: 4.10 (A = 4.00)
  Bachelors Degree in Computer Science (Jan 2000)
Cornell University Computer Science Department Ithaca, NY
GPA: 3.92 (A = 4.00)

PRESENTATIONS

  NVIDIA Developer Tools Overview
NVIDIA U 2007 - Los Angeles, CA

NVIDIA Developer Tools Overview
 NVIDIA U 2006 - Boston, MA

Mike & Luna: Even More Secrets from the NVIDIA Demo Team
Iron Developer 2005 - Tokyo, Japan

Mike & Luna: Even More Secrets from the NVIDIA Demo Team
 Perfect Kitchen Art 2005 - Beijing, China

Percentage-Closer Soft Shadows
 SIGGRAPH 2005 Sketch - Los Angeles, CA

Percentage-Closer Soft Shadows
Game Developers Conference 2005 NVIDIA Sponsored Session, San Jose, CA

NVIDIA Developer Tools Overview
2005 ACM Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics & Games - Washington, D.C.

Programming Graphics Hardware Course
Eurographics 2004 - Grenoble, France

Shader Model 3.0 Unleashed
SIGGRAPH 2004 NVIDIA Sponsored Session - Los Angeles, CA

Cg Training Sessions
SIGGRAPH 2003 (Developed content, organized, and taught)

OTHER PROJECTS

  Networking (Fall 1998)
 Completed a voice-mail service for an Internet Telephony project which required coordination with 19 other people and allowed users to check their mail from the phone, have their mail read to them, have personalized greetings, etc.

Computer Graphics Practicum (Spring 1998)
 Created a 45-second animated movie (including modeling, texturing, lighting, and animation).

Computer Design and Architecture (Fall 1997)
 First to successfully implement a microprocessor design and to download it onto a Xilinx FPGA chip in a class of over a hundred people.

ACM Symposium on Parallel Programming (Las Vegas, Nevada, 1997)
 Wrote a slot machine in Java that was used on the conference home page.

SPECIAL SKILLS

  • Knowledge of C, C++, Java, Pascal, BASIC, HTML, JavaScript, OpenGL, Cg, HLSL, MS Office, Windows NT, UNIX, DOS.
  • Extensive experience with and understanding of computer graphics (Samples of my work can be found on my web page.)
  • Extensive experience with and understanding of modern graphics processing units (GPUs), especially NVIDIA hardware
  • Knowledge of 3D Studio Max
  • Experience with Silicon Graphics Workstations and the IRIX Operating System.
  • Knowledge of MIPS processor architecture and instruction set.
  • Extensive knowledge of and experience with PC hardware.
  • Fluent in English, proficient in French and Sinhala.

PHILANTHROPY

  I think exposure to a wide variety of projects and activities helps build a balanced outlook on philanthropy and life. In addition, hands-on experience is critical to doing philanthropic work that is truly helpful. A subset of my recent activities is listed below.

  • Mindful Schools (formerly the Community Partnership for Mindfulness in Education) - Co-Director (Dec. 2008 – Present)
  • NVIDIA Foundation - Board of Directors (Dec. 2007 – Jul. 2009). Helped to build the Foundation from the ground up, including charter, goals, as well as program development. The Foundation is responsible for NVIDIA’s charitable and community activities.
  • Wrote an essay on "Why Do Charity Work?" (2009)
  • Integrated the book What Matters into the curriculum at Overfelt High School in San Jose (2008)
  • The Role Model Program. Taught 7th grade kids career planning as a Role Model [8 hours in class + 1 hour of training] (2007)
  • Crisis counseling training for dealing with suicide, alcohol & drug abuse, child abuse [21.5 hours training] (2004)
  • Second Harvest Food Bank (carrot sorting and bagging) [2 hours], Loaves & Fishes Family Kitchen in San Jose [4 hours] (2008)
  • Donated machines for removing phlegm from clogged lungs (visited hospital wards and spoke with attending doctor) (2006)
  • Donated artificial limb for a land mine victim (and spoke with recipient), donated food to ward for war casualties (2004)
  • Set up recording PC at the Insight Meditation Center [~8 hours] (2006)
  • Family Giving Tree. Christmas-time gift sorting for kids [4 hours] (2004)
  • Attended a talk by Dr. Carol Dweck about educating kids and fostering success [1.5 hours] (2007)
  • Attended a talk by Muhammad Yunus about Grameen Bank and the eradication of global poverty [1 hour] (2008)

AWARDS

  Outstanding Teaching Assistant
CS 417 & CS 418 [Computer Graphics]
Cornell University (Spring 2000)

Varsity Badminton Captain
International School Manila (1996)

All-Star Selections
International School Manila (Tennis - 1996, Badminton - 1994)

Member of Championship Teams
International School Manila (Tennis - 1996, Academic Bowl - 1996, Badminton - 1995)

Mathematics Prize
International School Manila (1996)

References available upon request.