CS&E Profile: Victoria Interrante

Visualization and computer graphics.

Ph.D. 1996, Computer Science, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

M.S. 1986, Computer Science, University of California, Los Angeles

B.A. 1984, Computer Science, University of Massechusetts, Boston

About

Associate Professor Interrante's research specializes in visualization and computer graphics, with a focus on issues of perception and design. She received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the federal government's highest honor for new scientists in 1999, and was awarded the McKnight Land-Grant Professorship in 2001-2003. She has played a key role in building interdisciplinary connections between the perception and graphics/visualization communities internationally, initiating the ACM/SIGGRAPH Symposium on Applied Perception and serving on the editorial board of the ACM Transactions on Applied Perception. She also enjoys numerous interdisciplinary collaborations with colleagues from a variety of departments across the University of Minnesota, including Architecture, Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, and the Institute of Child Development. 

Research

My research in computer graphics, visualization and perception focuses on the design and implementation of algorithms for making images that effectively communicate information. My current projects involve feature extraction for the visualization and quantitative analysis of vortical structures in turbulent flows, texture synthesis for 3D shape representation and high quality realistic rendering, perceptually-based methods for the effective dynamic visualization of multivariate and uncertainty data, and gaze determination of infants from photographs.

My work draws insights from research in human vision and visual perception, and inspiration from techniques in art, illustration, and graphic design, and combines them with analysis and display algorithms from computer graphics, computer vision and image processing to create visual representations of complicated data in which the most important content is made most easily accessible to the observer.

I enjoy collaborations with researchers across a diverse variety of application areas including Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Child Development, and the Center for Cognitive Sciences.