In 1984 Erland was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and in 1995, as Chairman of the Visual Effects Award Steering Committee, he achieved the long sought goal of establishing Visual Effects as a Branch of the Academy. He has served eleven years on the Board of Governors of the Academy, twenty-six years on the Executive Committee of the Visual Effects Branch and the Scientific and Engineering Awards Committee. He serves also on the Student Academy Awards Committee, the Foreign Films Committee and as a Nicholl Fellowship judge. He was a founding member of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures Committee, as well as the Academy Science and Technology Council, where he served on the Executive Committee and chaired the Research Committee and the Solid State Light Subcommittee.
For the Council, he has appeared in a number of public programs such as,“Movie Magic” where he presented the pre-cinema segment, “Minwa-Za Company of Tokyo” a program on Japanese shadow puppetry, “Illuminating the Future: the Arrival of Solid State Lighting” from which his presentation of “The Science of Colour” can be seen on the Academy website. In 2011, at NAB and also CineGear he presented, “Chromatic Chaos: Implications of Newly Introduced Forms of Stagelight.” a study of solid state lighting, which was also presented for the ASC-sponsored International Cinematographers Symposium, chaired by President Michael Goi, ASC. The Council, located at the Academy’s Pickford Centre for Motion Picture Studies, is also home to the Esmeralda Stage™ an imaging research laboratory Erland has been building for more than twenty five years.