CS&E Profile: Daniel Keefe

Scientific visualization, 3D user interfaces, and interactive computer graphics.

Ph.D. 2007, Computer Science, Brown University

Sc.M. 2001, Computer Science, Brown University

B.S.C.E. 1999, Computer Engineering, Tufts University

About

Assistant Professor Keefe specializes in visualization and interactive computer graphics. He received the NSF CAREER Award in 2011. He has published numerous articles in top journals and international conferences and has received best paper and best panel awards for his research and teaching. In addition to his work in computer science, he is also an accomplished artist and has published and exhibited work in top international venues for digital art. Before joining the University of Minnesota, Keefe did post-doctoral work at Brown University jointly with the departments of Computer Science and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and with the Rhode Island School of Design. He received the Ph.D. in 2007 from Brown University’s Department of Computer Science, which nominated his work for the ACM Dissertation Prize, and the B.S. in Computer Engineering summa cum laude from Tufts University in 1999. He is a member of the ACM and IEEE.

Research

My research explores a broad range of topics in the areas of visualization, computer graphics, and human-computer interaction. I am interested in questions, such as:

1. How can computer graphics most effectively leverage the power of the human visual system to facilitate understanding large multidimensional datasets?
2. To what extent can visualizations exploit emerging interface technologies to improve users’ abilities to understand massive datasets and to design complex 3D structures?

Current projects within my group center on: visualization of time-varying (motion) data, large-scale data visualization, perceptually optimized visualization, 3D user interfaces, haptics, and pen and multi-touch input techniques. My group regularly teams with scientists, engineers, artists, and designers to apply the computer science techniques we develop to interdisciplinary problems including virtual prototyping for medical device design, improving laparoscopic surgical training, analyzing clinical and experimental biomechanics data, reconstructing ancient Greek sites in virtual environments, and more.