Brown CS Alum Joseph J. Laviola Jr. Has Been Inducted Into The IEEE VGTC Virtual Reality Academy
- Posted by Jesse Polhemus
- on March 13, 2025
Earlier this week, Brown CS alum and former adjunct research faculty member and visiting scholar Joseph J. Laviola Jr. (now Charles N. Millican Professor of Computer Science at the University of Central Florida) has just received a high honor in the field of virtual reality.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Visualization and Graphics Technical Community (VGTC) provides technical leadership and organization for technical activities in the areas of visualization, computer graphics, virtual and augmented reality, and interaction. Every year since 2022, they have recognized leaders in the field whose significant contributions exceed or augment the criteria of existing VGTC awards by naming them to their Virtual Reality Academy. On Monday, Joseph was inducted into the IEEE VGTC Virtual Reality Academy at the annual IEEE VR conference, held this year in Saint-Malo, France.
Joseph directs the Interactive Computing Experiences Research Cluster, which develops innovative techniques, tools, and applications that improve the overall experience between humans and machines. He’s the former director of the Modeling and Simulation graduate program at the University of Central Florida. His primary research interests include pen- and touch-based interactive computing, virtual and augmented reality, 3D spatial interfaces, human-robot interaction, multimodal interaction, and user interface evaluation. He has published over 200 refereed journal and conference papers, 8 book chapters, and has 5 patents. His work has appeared in journals such as ACM TIIS, ACM TOCHI, IEEE PAMI, Presence, and IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, and he has presented research at conferences including ACM CHI, ACM IUI, IEEE Virtual Reality, and ACM SIGGRAPH. He is also the lead author on the second edition of 3D User Interfaces: Theory and Practice, the first comprehensive book on 3D user interfaces. In 2009, he won an NSF CAREER Award to conduct research on mathematical sketching.
“I am honored,” Joseph tells us, “to be selected to the IEEE VGTC VR Academy this year and to be a part of a group of VR researchers, developers, and practitioners that I looked up to and followed as a graduate student at Brown and as a professor at the University of Central Florida.”
The full list of inductees is available here.
For more information, click the link that follows to contact Brown CS Communications Manager Jesse C. Polhemus.
