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Top Interview

Alain Chesnais: Top-ranking Innovator, Executive, Researcher, Thought Leader - Alain Chesnais, newly elected 2010/11 President ACM, founder Visual Transitions, past CTO SceneCaster
Alain Chesnais, the newly elected ACM president, has more than 25 years of management experience in the software industry, with a focus on 3D technologies and social media.  He recently founded Visual Transitions, which specializes in helping companies move to HTML 5, the newest standard for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. The company plans to expand its online offerings with web presences that fully embrace the possibilities that HTML 5 offers, including web sockets, <audio> and <video> tags, as well as fully featured 3D capabilities through WebGL. Formerly chief technology officer at SceneCaster, he served as director of engineering at Alias|Wavefront on the team that received an Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for developing the Maya 3D software package.

Chesnais, who studied Mandarin at the United Nations International School in New York as a high school student, visited Harbin earlier this year to attend the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest.  He also traveled to Hangzhou for the Chinese International Cartoon and Animation Festival on behalf of SIGGRAPH (the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques).  The Hangzhou trip led to active efforts to establish a SIGGRAPH chapter in this region.

Among his other China-related interests is the impending launch of the ACM China Council, a team of leading Chinese computer scientists from academia and industry.  The ACM China Council will spearhead the expansion of ACM’s high-quality technical activities, conferences, chapters for students and professionals, awards nominations, and services for the computing profession in China to serve this growing constituency.