Academy Awards Watch: Honoring Geek Chic

The Academy's recognition ceremony for accomplishments in the area of scientific and technical contribution to film was held in Beverly Hills last night. As part of the commitment of this blog to comment on the role of women and men in popular culture including tech, I'm obliged to report that the winners were all white dudes. This is not so surprising, as the educational and cultural institutions which promote success in science and technology have historically given been populated by given preference to white men. But I have few doubts  that as these industries become less exclusive and girl gamers and programmers are on the rise, the demo of these awards will change a lot over the next twenty years. That will not however stop me from commenting that the choice of a gorgeous woman to host (Jessica Biel this year, succeeding prior hosting hotties Jessica Alba, Scarlett Johansson, and Charlize Theron) does not = gender balance:  it's more like throwing chum to an audience of hungry sharks, hungry nerdy sharks.

A brief list of the winners is below, with details on the Academy's webpage.

Gordon E. Sawyer Award - Ed Catmull, a computer scientist, co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios, and president of Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios. 

John A. Bonner Medal - Mark Kimball, a computer scientist and motion picture technologist with more than 28 years experience in the movie industry

Technical Achievement Award - Steve Hylen, inventor of the Hylen Lens System

Scientific and Engineering Award - Erwin Melzer, Volker Schumacher, & Timo Muller for the Arrimax 18/12 lighting fixture .

Scientific and Engineering Award  - Jacques Delacoux and Alexandre Leuchter for the Transvideo-video assist monitors

Scientific and Engineering Award  - Bruno Coumert, Jacques Debize, Dominique Chervin and Christophe Reboulet for the Angenieux 15-40 and 28-76 zoom lenses

A sincere congratulations to all.