NCUR 2025 Plenary Presentations

April 7, 2025 | 3:00 - 4:00 pm ET

Welcome Plenary | Bring It On: Embracing Challenges in the World of High Achievers

Life presents us with recurring challenges to face, failures to learn from, and obstacles to overcome. Combining fields of clinical psychology, academic research, and mental performance training, Dr. Wildenhaus will share how you can apply his work with high-achieving entrepreneurs, business leaders, and pro athletes to your own personal and professional growth and development.

Kevin Wildenhaus, Ph.D.

Retired Behavioral Science Lead, Janssen World Without Disease Accelerator, Johnson & Johnson, Inc.

Mental Performance Team Psychologist, Pittsburgh Steelers, Pittsburgh Penguins

Dr. Wildenhaus is a Clinical Psychologist and led behavioral science innovation and research within Janssen’s World Without Disease Accelerator organization until his retirement in 2022. His R&D focus included digital technology solutions for smoking cessation as part of their Lung Cancer Initiative and perinatal depression risk prediction, assessment, and intervention as part of Janssen’s Disease Interception Accelerator. He designed behavioral intervention digital apps to screen, monitor and intercept Atrial Fibrillation as part of the Heartline Study conducted in partnership with Apple. He is the former Director of Behavioral Science for HealthMedia, Inc. providing tailored digital health solutions to millions of health plan and employer members. Previously, he was the Director of Behavioral Science in the Department of Family Medicine at Henry Ford Health System. With his expertise in health behavior change and brief treatment interventions, Dr. Wildenhaus has consulted with many organizations that provide wellness, behavioral health, and disease management services, conducting program reviews and providing staff training in behavioral science models and behavior change techniques. He has given many national lectures, presentations and workshops. In addition to his specialization in digital health solutions, health psychology and behavioral science, Kevin is also a Sport Psychologist and has worked with many amateur, Olympic and professional athletes and teams. He has served as Mental Performance Team Psychologist for the Pittsburgh Steelers since 2001 and the Pittsburgh Penguins since 2018.

April 9, 2025 | 10:30 - 11:30 AM ET

Plenary | Where Science Meets Art: Simulating Hair for Animated Films

Hair simulation in animated feature films presents many challenges, ranging from incorporating artistic control to dealing with extreme, non-physical character motion. In a production environment, hair simulation needs to be fast, stable, and usable without excessive parameter tuning in order to produce content efficiently. These challenges only increase when simulating a variety of hair styles on numerous characters in the film. In this talk I will present our method for stably simulating stylized hair that addresses these artistic needs and performance demands. In addition to the underlying hair model that defines the physical motion, I will discuss various artistic controls and approaches used to produce our final hair simulations in several feature films.

Join Hayley Iben, Director of Engineering at Pixar Animation Studios, as she shares her groundbreaking work on the Taz Hair Simulation System, used in films from Pixar's Brave to Inside Out 2. Learn how her passion for animation and expertise in computer science and mathematics led to innovations that blend technology with artistic expression. This talk offers insights for students across disciplines—whether you're studying science, engineering, art, or storytelling—on how research can inspire creativity and drive innovation in unexpected ways.

Hayley Iben

Director of Engineering, Pixar Animation Studios

Hayley Iben is a Director of Engineering in the Software R&D department at Pixar Animation Studios. Her teams are responsible for creating and supporting the software used by many of the film production departments at the studio, from asset creation to shot production. Prior to undertaking this role in 2020, Hayley led the simulation engineering team for seven years at the studio. Her team was responsible for character simulation technologies, including cloth, hair, flesh, and skin. For a decade Hayley had also developed the studio’s hair technology, Taz, that debuted in Pixar’s Academy Award®-winning film “Brave” and quickly became Pixar's de facto hair simulation system. With twenty-one film credits, her work has also appeared in films such as Pixar’s “Inside Out,” “The Good Dinosaur,” “Finding Dory,” “Coco,” “Incredibles 2,” “Onward,” “Soul,” “Turning Red,” and “Inside Out 2.” In February 2021, Hayley and collaborators were honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with a Technical Achievement Award for their work on Pixar’s Taz Hair Simulation System.

In her early career at the studio, Hayley also contributed to the Academy Award®-winning Presto Animation System, building tools for character articulation and animation with a focus on inverse kinematics and mathematical techniques.

Hayley earned a B.S. in computer science from Duquesne University, and a M.S. and Ph.D. in computer science with an emphasis in computer graphics from the University of California, Berkeley.

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