His work on physically-based modeling for facial surgery simulation (FACE Project) eventually led to the spin-off company Cyfex founded in 2000. In 2002 he co-founded Novodex, a company focusing on middleware for physics-modeling in computer games. The firm was chosen by Ageia as a software platform to support their upcoming PhysX PPU card, which became the basis of the PhysX SDK 2.x series. Aegia acquired Novodex in 2004, and Gross became the chair of the technical advisory committee. In 2008, Ageia was itself acquired by graphics technology manufacturer Nvidia. Gross’ research on 3D video recording, compression, editing and visual effects led to the creation of the startup-company LiberoVision which in 2012 was acquired by Vizrt and rebranded “Viz Libero”. Before joining Disney Research, Gross also worked on theoretical modeling of dyslexia. He developed a statistical model and a multimodal recoding system to facilitate language acquisition for people with dyslexia which resulted in the multimedia learning software Dybuster and the foundation of the company of the same name. Gross has received multiple awards. The most recent is the Karl Heinz Beckurts Prize for outstanding technological innovations with strong practical relevance. Also in 2013, Gross received the Konrad Zuse Medal of the German association of computer sciences (GI), the highest award for scientific achievements in computer sciences in Germany. From the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Markus Gross received a “Tech-Oscar”, also known as the Technical Achievement Award together with Nils Thuerey, Theo Kim, and Doug James for the development of a procedure to simulate smoke and explosions more efficiently. Further, Gross received the Outstanding Technical Contributions Award EUROGRAPHICS in 2010 and the Swiss ICT Champions Award in 2011. According to Google Scholar, his most cited papers are