Dr Kiran Bhat and his team have been awarded the ‘2017 Oscar for Scientific and technical Achievements’ for the design and development.

Oscar award winner, Dr Kiran Bhat interacts with media persons through video conference on Monday. (Photo: DC)

COIMBATORE: Mechanical engineering is in his genes. Who would have thought the family of mechanical engineers from Coimbatore would make the entire nation proud one day by winning an Oscar award in the technical category?

Dr Kiran Bhat and his team have been awarded the ‘2017 Oscar for Scientific and technical Achievements’ for the design and development of the ‘ILM facial performance- capture solving system’.

The technology developed by the 41-year old mechanical engineer enables high-fidelity facial performance transfer from actors to digital characters in large-scale productions while retaining full artistic control, and integrates stable rig-based solving and the resolution of secondary detail in a controllable pipeline.

He has actively contributed to the technical aspects of films like Avengers, Pirates of the Caribbean, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, Warcraft, Star Wars Episode VII and Star Wars Rogue One.

His start-up venture ‘Loom.ai’ has built technology for creating personalised and expressive ‘3D digital avatars’ from photographs that can be plugged into games, messaging chatbots, social VR and e-commerce. It has been nominated as one of the top five tech trends in the US for the year 2017 in ‘Today’s Show’ of NBC.

He will be honoured at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences’ annual Scientific and technical Awards Presentation on February 11, 2017, at the Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills, California, USA.

Dr Kiran and his team have been working on this project for the past eight years. His father K. Srinivas Bhat, who was working for ISRO for 15 years and now has his own industry in Coimbatore, met the press here today where his son, Kiran Bhat joined via videoconference.

Kiran was a district topper in plus-2 examinations in the year 1993 from Stanes Higher Secondary School, Coimbatore. He completed his double degree in EEE and Mechanical Engineering from BITS Pilani in 1998 and later he did his Ph.D. in Robotics and Artificial Intelligent from the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburg, USA, in 2004.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the names of 18 scientific and technical achievements represented by 34 individual award recipients as well as five organisations on January 4.