For the second time in history, a Coimbatorean has bagged an Oscar, for his technical expertise as part of the team that designed and developed ILM’s facial-performance-capture solving system.

The awardee, Kiran Bhat, a former Coimbatore district Higher Secondary Examination topper from Stanes Anglo Indian Higher Secondary School, has won the award for his contributions in various Hollywood films including “Avengers,” “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” “Warcraft,” “Star Wars Episode VII” and “Rogue One.”

He will be sharing the award with fellow Indian American Parag Havaldar.

Talking with media persons through Skype from the US on Monday, Kiran shared the challenges and prospects of the facial performance translation from original artists to digital characters.

“One of our biggest challenges was bringing out the exact expression of the character when we first started working with Mark Ruffalo in the creation of Hulk for “Avengers.” It was done by capturing Mark Ruffalo’s expressions and translating it into the digital character of Hulk, who was shown on screen,” he said.

He added that resurrecting the late Peter Cushing in the movie “Rogue One” was also a challenge that was solved by using a stand-in actor, Guy Henry, as the character. “Peter Cushing would perform on screen what Guy Henry would play in front of the camera,” he added.

Being sceptical over whether such technology would come to India anytime soon, Kiran opined that only big studios in the US held the technology exclusively as only certain facilities allowed such technological advancements.

“But it could be taken up by youngsters who could use the idea and develop such creations as many papers have been published on them,” said Kiran, who is currently running a new start-up in the US named Loom.ai.

Kiran would be receiving the award at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ annual Scientific and Technical Awards presentation on February 11 at Beverly Wilshire Hotel, Beverly Hills, California.

Notably, he would be the eighth Indian to receive the award and only the second from Coimbatore, after Cottalango Leone bagged an Oscar in 2016.