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ACM SIGGRAPH will award its 2004 Significant New Researcher Award to Zoran Popovic for his outstanding and highly promising contributions to computer animation. In his much-cited first paper at SIGGRAPH 95, Popovic demonstrated the potential for editing human motion data. His ideas stimulated further research and have made their way into industry applications. Popovic has published numerous papers on the synthesis of motion from captured data, parameter extraction, control systems for animations, skeletal animation of deformable characters, and deformations driven by range scan data. Many of these papers reflect collaborations with students not previously published, a testament to his ability to work cooperatively with other researchers. Throughout his work Popovic has shown that combining measured data with simulation will simplify the production of convincing synthetic motion. He has also addressed a long standing problem in computer animation, the ability for animators to obtain more expressive control of motion. For example, three of his papers at SIGGRAPH 2003 focused on providing the user with control over animated motion in very different domains: keyframe control of smoke simulation; control of bird flight; and acting with props to produce character animation. An assistant professor at the University of Washington, Popovic received a Sc.B in computer science from Brown University and earned his MS and PhD at Carnegie Mellon University. He receives his award at SIGGRAPH 2004, August 8-12, at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, CA.