New Royal Society Industry Fellow, Taku Komura, to work with Disney Research

The Royal Society recently announced eight new fellowships aimed at strengthening links between academia and industry. The fellowships are awarded to academic scientists who want to work on a collaborative project with industry and for scientists in industry who want to work on a collaborative project with an academic organisation.

The latest awardees' project topics range from animation technology to low-carbon steel manufacturing.

Dr Taku Komura will be joining Disney Research for his Industry Fellowship. His research will focus on the natural and realistic movement of animated human characters and robots, with a particular focus on close interactions between characters; for example one character carrying another during a rescue scene, or characters dancing or playing sports. These actions are already well designed in films, but the process is often cumbersome; Dr Komura works on solving these current challenges; he has proposed several breakthroughs in the last few years.

I am very excited to work with Disney Research, which is one of the strongest research groups in the world. Professor Kenny Mitchell, at Disney Research's subsidiary office in Edinburgh, is leading research on a Digital Acting project on which I will be collaborating.

The Royal Society Industry Fellowship scheme provides each scientist's basic salary for the duration of their secondment, which lasts for up to two years full-time or four years part-time.