Mr. Ressler is currently a program manager at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) where he has been for over twenty ears. Prior to NIST he was at a video game startup, and at Bell Labs. During his over twenty-five year career he has always been involved in interactive computer graphics.  His research work appears frequently in a variety of scientific and technical venues, and his columns, editorials, and articles have chronicled Web3D standards and contributed to the field of Digital Human Modeling.

Mr. Ressler is a pioneer and visionary in the development of 3D computer graphics for use on the Internet, primarily via work with the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML), the ISO standard for 3D on the World Wide Web. Over the last ten years, Ressler has been one of the central figures in this field.  He was on the Web3D  Consortium’s Board of Directors for  6 years, two of which as Vice President. This organization is responsible for both VRML and X3D, its successor. Ressler has been a leader, ensuring that the X3D standard has moved through to completion. From 1997-2001, he created and ran the world’s leading web site for 3D on the web at About.com.

Ressler’s activities as co-chair and program committee member of a  series of Web3D Symposiums and his running of several Web3D Showcase events (demonstration events) at SIGGRAPH (the premier conference for the computer graphics industry) has exposed tens of thousands of people to Web3D applications. Nearly 3000 people attended Ressler’s  highly successful “demo” event for industry during 2004. Ressler has also been a leader in applying visualizations for 3D anthropometry (human measurement) data, resulting in safer children’s products. His more recent work with Web3D has involved broadening it's applicability for medical imaging, co-chairing a working group on medical extensions to X3D. He is widely regarded as one of the leading figures in the industry as illustrated by articles in the press including the NY Times, Federal Computer Week, and Popular Mechanics. Ressler has also authored three books, two on electronic publishing and coauthored the classic "Life with UNIX". 

Until recently at his day job at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, for the past ten years Ressler ran a project called "Visualization and Virtual Reality for Manufacturing". This project made significant contributions to the use of visualization and VR to a number of manufacturing challenges. He founded the Open Virtual Reality Testbed, which he characterizes as "four buzz words in search of funding", always seeking to inject humor into the day to day toil of research.

Currently he is a program manager for a new program on "Complex Systems" an effort currently focused on Network Science and associated application areas. Ressler's formal education is in the visual arts with an MFA degree when he produced computer animation in the stone ages of the mid 70s.

• 3D Body Shape, and My Underwear Crisis:

  Body shape can have interesting consequences and characterizing these shapes can have a significant impact on a number of industries not to mention your underwear! This talk will present the result of mischaracterized body shape and how they aff...

• 3D Computer Graphics and the World Wide Web:

  For nearly 10 years a number of 3D standards and de-facto specifications have been created to bring the experience of 3D computer graphics to the casual web surfer. These graphic standards have been wildly hyped, some of them ha...

• Beer Bellies, Bountiful Behinds and Other Mysteries of the Human Form:

  Human shape is one of the most personal and misunderstood forms with a host of uses! Anthropometry, the measurement of humans has been around for centuries. Recently 3D laser scanning has begun to be used as a method to characterize the entire s...

• Show Me the Volumes!: Medical Imagery:

  Medical imaging technologies are exploding. It seems that each week new imaging modalities are announced along with medical breakthroughs utilizing this imagery. Most medical imagery involves volumetric imaging a fundamentally different method o...