As you may know Andrew Reisse, co-founders of the Virtual Reality startup Oculus VR, died tragically in a hit-and-run motor accident last month. Oculus have now announced details of a Memorial Fund to commemorate his life.
The shocking news of Andrew Reisse’s death last month, as you’d expect, shook the Oculus team hard. Described as a “brilliant computer graphics engineer” Reisse was instrumental in producing Oculus’ SDK and left behind an impressive legacy in the computer games industry having influenced 1000’s of games throughout his career.
The Andrew Reisse Memorial Scholarship
To mark his passing and to commemorate his work, Oculus VR have worked with The University of Maryland in setting up the Andrew Reisse Memorial Scholarship. Seeding it with $50,000 of company funds which it hopes will encourage the nurturing of talent. From the Scholarship landing page:
This scholarship has been created in memory of Andrew by Oculus VR, Inc. and his parents, Dr. Robert ’70, ’76 and Mrs. Dana Reisse ’73, who met at Maryland while pursuing their graduate studies. Contributions will establish an endowed scholarship to ensure that future Terps are given the same opportunity to change the world as Andrew did.
You can donate proceeds to the fund here.
The Andrew Reisse Memorial Internship Fund
Not only that, but an Internship Fund with NRDS (the National Resources Defense Fund) has also been seeded to the tune of $5000 by Oculus. Andrew was a keen photographer and lover of wildlife and the outdoors and was a loyal member of the NRDC in his lifetime too. You can donate to the NRDC fund here. And, for those interested in viewing some of Andrew’s photography, a selection of this work is on show here.
Road To VR’s Coverage
At the time of Andrew’s death, Road To VR felt that it was (rightly or wrongly) respectful to hold off on reporting the sad news immediately to allow his friends and relatives time to come to terms with the tragic event. For this reason and this reason only, this is the first time we’ve run an article on Andrew’s passing.
We’d therefore like to take this opportunity to send our condolences and best wishes to Andrew’s friends and relatives during this sad time. Oculus has shown great compassion in setting up these new funds and it’s comforting to think they’ll be around to mark Andrew’s memory in the future.
