Oscar honours for Moodbidri origin engineer Kiran Bhat

Mangalore Today News Network

Mangaluru, Jan 11,2017:  Kiran Bhat,  a Coimbatore based  talent whose family roots are in Kadandale near Moodbidri in Dakshina Kannada district, has  bagged the coveted  Oscar Award for technical  excellence. He along with three others will receive the award at the presentation ceremony to be held at Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills on February 11 for the design and development of ILM Facial Performance-capture solving system.

Forty one  year old Kiran  is an alumnus of Stanes Anglo Indian School. He did his   B.E. in mechanical and electrical as well as well as electronics engineering from Birla Institute of Technology, Pilani. He has also done in doctorate in computer science  from Carnegie Mellon University in USA.

The facial performance capture system was developed by Kiran and his colleagues Brian Cantwell, Paige Warner and Michael Koperwas six years ago while working in ILM. The technology was first used in Avengers for the character Hulk and later in other movies like Pirates of the Caribbean, Warcraft, Star Wars Episode VII and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

Kiran had quit ILM a year ago and has  ventured into his own firm Loom.ai which develops technology for personalised and 3D digital avatars from photographs  which can be plugged into e-commerce, social virtual reality, messaging bots and games.

Kiran’s father Srinivas Bhat Kadandale hails from the family of priests of Kadandale Subrahmanya Temple while his mother Jayashree is from Kalianpur. Srinivas Bhat has an industry in Coimbatore.  Kiran Bhat’s wife too is a doctorate degree holder.