Kass, David Baraff and Andrew Witkin shared an Academy Award for Scientific and Technical Achievement in 2005 for clothing animation, including his pioneering work on the clothing simulator[4] used by Pixar in the short Geri's Game,[5][6] Best Animated Short Film, Academy Awards 1997.

"[8] Google Scholar counts over 30K citations to his work,[9] including one of the top 20 most cited papers in computer science,[10] “Snakes: Active Contour Models," authored with Andrew Witkin and Demetri Terzopoulos.

His early days in advanced technologies began at Schlumberger Artificial Intelligence Research Laboratory after earning his Ph.D. from Stanford.

[1] Kass has 28 issued U.S. patents[11] and was honored in 2018 by the New York Intellectual Property Law Association as Inventor of the Year.

Prior to NVIDIA, he was a senior principal engineer in the New Technology Group at Intel,[15] distinguished fellow at Magic Leap,[16] a senior research scientist at Pixar Animation Studios, and a principal engineer with the Advanced Technology Group at Apple Computers.