# Christopher Horvath > Principal Software Engineer, Multi GPU Simulation Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/christopherhorvath I love making pictures with computers. I've been doing this for as long as I've had access to a computer, starting with attempting to reproduce a Shel Silverstein drawing on a dot matrix printer in third grade, to Commodore 64 game creators, and through all these years - I used the very first and the very last Silicon Graphics workstations. Simulation of the natural world is an integral component of convincing picture making, so I've gained a background in simulation as well. ## Work Experience ### Principal Software Engineer @ NVIDIA Jan 2021 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area I'm working on building an ultra-high-resolution simulation system that works in parallel across multiple GPUs. It's thrilling, and I'm so excited to be back creating water simulations. ### Technical Evangelist @ NVIDIA Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 | San Francisco Bay Area ### Staff Simulation Engineer, Engineering Manager @ Cruise Jan 2018 – Jan 2020 | San Francisco Bay Area I co-founded and was the technical lead for the NPC AI group, as part of the Simulation team. Our team's role was to use machine learning to improve the reactive simulations of pedestrians, cyclists, and other vehicles in simulated environments for our autonomous vehicles. ### Software Engineer @ Facebook Jan 2017 – Jan 2018 | San Francisco Bay Area I was a member of the Social VR team, working on the task of creating playful, stylized 3D Avatars for users based on photographs and customizations. I designed and built the prototype web renderer for our Avatar editor, which used models from our art department and was connected to a machine-learning pipeline for configuring face shapes based on profile photos. I was able to work in almost every level of the Facebook infrastructure, committing code in at least six different programming languages. I also was briefly in the news for having invented a new unit of time for media applications, the "Flick". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flick_(time) ### Digital Imaging Technical Subcommittee Member @ Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Jan 2013 – Jan 2018 | Hollywood, California I am a member of the subcommittee of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that investigates and reports on the Scientific and Technical Achievement Academy Awards. ### VFX Architect @ Oculus VR Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 | San Francisco Bay Area This position was with Oculus Story Studio. I was responsible for the design and implementation of an infrastructure and foundation layer which was used to explore simultaneous multi-user VR experiences. I also established and maintained the third-party software repository. I built various data transformation utilities for use in the production of VR short films, including 'Dear Angelica'. ### Co-Program Chair @ International Digital Production Symposium (DigiPro) Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 DigiPro is a conference co-located at SIGGRAPH each year that focuses on practical production solutions within the digital content creation community. For two years (the usual tenure) I was one of two program chairs, responsible for soliciting papers and reviewers, assigning peer reviews, and ultimately assembling the conference program. ### Roboticist @ Google Jan 2014 – Jan 2016 | Palo Alto, California I was the first external hire to Google's robotics effort, which was called Replicant. We were beginning with a clean slate code base, and my initial responsibilities involved designing and building the kinematics library, and subsequently upgrading it over new revisions. Later I became jointly responsible for our third-party software repository, and was the technical lead for an internal real-time rendering project for use in the robotics software environment. ### Global Technology Technical Director @ Pixar Animation Studios Jan 2011 – Jan 2013 | San Francisco Bay Area I worked as a GT technical director and FX artist on Brave (briefly), The Good Dinosaur, and Finding Dory. During my time at Pixar I designed and built a multi-scale SPH fluid solver, capable of simulating large bodies of water to a very high degree of detail. I also designed and built the prototype for an implicit surface compositing engine called GIN, which has been used extensively in Pixar productions since its inception. https://graphics.pixar.com/library/MultiScaleSPH/index.html ### Lead 3D Supervisor @ FUEL VFX Jan 2010 – Jan 2011 | Sydney, Australia I worked with the founders and managing directors of Fuel to expand their technical infrastructure in order to scale to a larger volume of feature film and commercial VFX work. ### Lead Technical Director @ Industrial Light & Magic Jan 2007 – Jan 2010 | San Francisco Bay Area I co-designed and implemented ILM's GPU-based Fire Simulation System for the film, "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince", as well as co-authoring a related technical paper in SIGGraph 2009. I led the development and utilization of ILM's GPU-based Rigid Body Solver for the film, "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen". I was an original architect of the Alembic Open Source File Format, which is now an industry standard. ### Computer Graphics Supervisor @ Weta Digital Jan 2004 – Jan 2007 | Wellington & Wairarapa, New Zealand I led Weta's water team through the simulation and rendering of hundreds of water shots for several films including, "King Kong", "The Waterhorse", "Xmen 3", and others. I designed and implemented Weta's particle rendering toolkit, "Pinst", which remains in use to this day, as well as Weta's fully-3D Navier Stokes fluid solvers. During a short return trip in 2011, I implemented a new deep ocean toolkit for the animated feature, “The Adventures of Tin-Tin”. ### Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer @ Tweak Films Jan 2001 – Jan 2004 | San Francisco Bay Area I supervised the technical and aesthetic direction of Tweak's acclaimed work on dozens of film and commercial projects. I was awarded a Hong Kong Film Academy Award for the Zhang Yimou film, "Hero", and also a Best Single Visual Effect of the Year V.E.S. Award for the film, "The Day After Tomorrow". I also contributed to the development and promotion of the OpenGTO Computer Graphics File Format, a descendent of Alembic, and still used by many facilities in production to this day. ### R&D Technical Director @ Industrial Light & Magic Jan 1997 – Jan 2001 | San Francisco Bay Area I worked as an R&D TD on many films, including Snake Eyes, Deep Impact, Star Wars Episode I, The Mummy, and The Perfect Storm. During this tenure at ILM, I built and deployed one of the first Navier Stokes Fluid Dynamics Simulation engines to be used in feature film production, for the film "Deep Impact". This was described in a VFX Blog Post: https://vfxblog.com/deepimpact/ ### Digital Compositing Instructor @ Vancouver Film School Jan 1996 – Jan 1997 | Vancouver, Canada Area ### Member Of Technical Staff @ Alias|Wavefront Jan 1995 – Jan 1997 | Vancouver, Canada Area ### 3D Artist @ Garner MacLennan Design Jan 1994 – Jan 1995 | Sydney, Australia ## Education ### Mechanical Engineering in Computer Science UNSW ### Mechanical Engineering University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/christopher-horvath-1a917b18b --- Source: https://flows.cv/christopherhorvath JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/christopherhorvath/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-12