Carolina Cruz-Neira, Ph.D.

Joint Faculty
Agere Chair Professor in Computer Science
Director, VARLAB

Lab:

VARLAB

Office:
HEC 214
Contact:
407-823-2341
carolina@ucf.edu

Google Scholar

Appointments

Agere Chair Professor, UCF
Senior Advisor, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
CEO, CG Heroes, LLC
Co-Founder and Steering committee member, Americal CyberAlliance
Steering Committee member, NSF Big Data South Hub

Highlights

Research Activities

Live Immersive field trips (Unity funded)
Eye tracking interfaces (Lockheed Martin funded)
Visual Data Analytics (DHS funded)
Human Digital Twins (Army funded)
Digital Twin frameworks (UCF-funded)
vDen: Low-cost, Portable Immersive Display System (http://www.vdenvr.com)
Interactive dance performances, museum installations

Honors & Awards

IEEE Fellow, 2020
National Academy of Engineering member, 2018
Spark Star, Museum of Discovery, Little Rock, AR, 2016
Named among “the top 25 innovators in virtual reality,” Polygon Media, 2016
Named one of the three “Virtual Reality Greatest Female Innovators,” University Herald, 2016.
Winner, Sikorsky Entrepreneurial Challenge 2014 (with Dirk Reiners and Don Pierce)
Member, National Research Council Panel on Human Factors Science for the Army Research Laboratory 2013-2015.
2009 Distinguished Career Award, International Digital Media & Arts Society
IEEE VGTC Virtual Reality Technical Achievement Award 2007
Inducted by the ACM as a “Computer Graphics Pioneer,” January 2003
Eminent Engineer, Tau Beta Pi, April 2002
Boeing Welliver Faculty Fellowship, Summer 2001

Professional Activities

Chief Editor, VR and Industry, Frontiers in Virtual Reality Journal
Editorial Board, Computers and Graphics Journal
Editorial Board, Multimodal Technologies and Interaction Journal
Panel reviewer (NSF, NASA, NIH, NIST)
IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces, Co-founder, and several roles (General conference Chair, Program Chair, Research Exhibits Chair, Publicity Chair, technical program reviewer)

Research Interests:

Applications of immersive technologies
Architectures for hetereogeneous collaborative experiences
Context-driven immersive interfaces and collaborative spaces
Design and development of new visual interfaces
Digital Twins
Software architectures for real-time visualization and interactive applications
Translational Research

Areas of Expertise:

Augmented Reality (AR)
Digital Engineering
Simulation and Training
Virtual Reality (VR)
Virtual Technologies
Visual Data Analytics

Application Areas:

Corporate
Defense
Education
Energy
Healthcare
Medical
Microelectronics and Semiconductor Fabrication
Smart Cities
Space
Transportation