Stephan Vladimir Bugaj

Stephan Vladimir Bugaj is Technical Director at Pixar Animation Studios. Films he’s worked on include the features The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, WALL-E, Brave, as well as the Cars Toons shorts.
 
Stephan is a professional with experience in both the technical and creative aspects of animated and live action film making. He also has professional experience with computer science R&D in the areas of multimedia and artificial intelligence.
 
His specialties include screenwriting; fiction writing; sci/tech writing; copywriting; directing; photography and cinematography; producing; production pipeline analysis; shading and rendering with slim, sl, and prman; compositing; cloth and hair simulation; non-linear editing; audio recording; sound design; AI theory; software engineering; software and systems requirements analysis and design; information architecture; server and cluster architecture; business process analysis; market analysis; and product design.
 
Stephan is coauthor of The Path to Posthumanity: 21st Century Technology and Its Radical Implications for Mind, Society and Reality, and contributing author to The VES Handbook of Visual Effects: Industry Standard VFX Practices and Procedures, Creating Internet Intelligence: Wild Computing, Distributed Digital Consciousness, and the Emerging Global Brain, Artificial General Intelligence 2008:Proceedings of the First AGI Conference, and Advances in Artificial General Intelligence: Concepts, Architectures and Algorithms.
 
His papers include Exploring Android Developmental Psychology in a Simulation World, Stages of Cognitive Development in Uncertain-Logic-Based AI Systems, The Message Is The Medium, AGI Preschool: A Framework for Evaluating Early-Stage Human-like AGIs, Five Ethical Imperatives and their Implications for Human-AGI Interaction, Stages of Ethical Development in Artificial General Intelligence Systems, and The Coming Evolution.
 
His patents include Dependency graph-based aggregate asset status reporting methods and apparatus, Automatic pre-render pinning of change isolated assets methods and apparatus, Manual component asset change isolation methods and apparatus, and System and method for flexible path handling.
 
Stephan earned his AA in Liberal Arts and Quantitative Studies at Bard College at Simon’s Rock in 1993. He studied Computer Science and the Philosophy of Technology at San Jose State University from 1993 to 1995. He studied Filmmaking at the City College of San Francisco from 1994 to 1995. He studied Computer Science at UC Berkeley from 1994 to 1996. He studied Computer Science at the Stevens Institute of Technology from 1996 to 1998. He earned his Advanced Professional Certificate in Screenwriting at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2008.
 
Watch AGI Preschool: A Framework for Evaluating Early-Stage Human-like AGIs and How do we more greatly ensure responsible AGI? View his Facebook page and his Flickr photostream. Read his LinkedIn profile. Follow his Twitter feed.