Carolina Cruz-Neira is a

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computer engineer, researcher, designer, educator, and a pioneer of virtual reality (VR). She is known for inventing the cave automatic virtual environment (CAVE). She previously worked at Iowa State University (ISU), University of Louisiana at Lafayette (UL Lafayette), University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UA Little Rock), and she is currently an Agere Chair Professor at

University of Central Florida The University of Central Florida (UCF) is a public research university whose main campus is in unincorporated Orange County, Florida. UCF also has nine smaller regional campuses throughout central Florida. It is part of the State University ...

(UCF).

Education

Cruz-Neira graduated ''

cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sou ...

'' with a degree in

systems engineering Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design, integrate, and manage complex systems over their life cycles. At its core, systems engineering utilizes systems thinking ...

from the Universidad Metropolitana in

Caracas, Venezuela Caracas (, ), officially Santiago de León de Caracas, abbreviated as CCS, is the capital and largest city of Venezuela, and the center of the Metropolitan Region of Caracas (or Greater Caracas). Caracas is located along the Guaire River in th ...

in 1987. She earned a master's degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of Illinois, Chicago in 1991, and her PhD in 1995, working under computer graphics researcher Thomas DeFanti.

Work

Cave automatic virtual environment

The first CAVE was invented by Carolina Cruz-Neira, Daniel J. Sandin, and Thomas A. DeFanti in 1992. For her PhD dissertation, Cruz-Neira designed and developed the CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment, its specifications, and implementation. She also designed and implemented the CAVELib software API, now a commercial product. She was the architect of the Open Source API VR Juggler, an open source virtual reality applications development framework. The CAVE is an immersive system that became the standard for rear projection-based virtual reality systems. The normal full system consists of projections screens along the front, side and floor axes, and a tracking system for the "user". Although they used the recursive acronym Cave Automatic Virtual Environment for the CAVE system, the name also refers to Plato's "Republic" and "The Allegory of the Cave" where he explored the concepts of reality and human perception. There have been a couple offshoots of the CAVE technology, including ImmersaDesk, Infinity Wall and Oblong Industries' G-speak system. The ImmersaDesk is a semi-immersive system, resembling a drafting table, while the Infinity Wall is designed to cater to an entire room of people, such as a conference room. Extending this concept, G-speak supports gestural input from multiple-users and multiple-devices on and expandable array of monitors.

Academia

Video of Dr. Carolina Cruz-Neira (2016), on how virtual reality will shape the world of tomorrow, alt=Carolina Cruz-Neira on how virtual reality will shape the world of tomorrow Cruz-Neira was the Stanley Chair professor in Interdisciplinary Engineering, and a co-founder of the

Virtual Reality Applications Center The Virtual Reality Applications Center (VRAC) is a research center within the Engineering Teaching and Research Complex (ETRC) at Iowa State University (ISU) and is involved in advanced research of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), ...

(VRAC) at Iowa State University (ISU). In 2002, Dr. Cruz-Neira co-founded and co-directed the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) graduate program at ISU. She later joined the

University of Louisiana at Lafayette The University of Louisiana at Lafayette (UL Lafayette, University of Louisiana, ULL, or UL) is a Public university, public research university in Lafayette, Louisiana. It has the largest enrollment within the nine-campus University of Louisian ...

in 2005, and in 2006, was the first CEO and Chief Scientist of LITE (Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprise), a Louisiana State initiative to support economic development immersive technologies. From 2009 to 2014 she was the W. Hansen Hall and Mary Officer Hall/BORSF Endowed Super Chair in Telecommunications in Computer Engineering at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. In 2014, she was named an Arkansas Research Scholar by the Arkansas Research Alliance and moved to Little Rock to lead the Emerging Analytics Center (EAC) at the

University of Arkansas at Little Rock The University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UA Little Rock) is a public research university in Little Rock, Arkansas. Established as Little Rock Junior College by the Little Rock School District in 1927, the institution became a private four-yea ...

. In 2019, Cruz-Neira joined the

, as an Agere Chair Professor in the Computer Science Department. Many of her former students are now doing leading work in VR at places such as Unity Labs, Intel, Microsoft Research, Google, DreamWorks, EA, Deere & Company, Boeing, Sony Pictures Imageworks, and Argonne National Laboratory.

Other work

In 2017, Cruz-Neira was included in episode 8 "the player", in a ten part, Dutch documentary series, ''The'' ''Mind of the Universe'' (2017) by

Robbert Dijkgraaf Robertus Henricus "Robbert" Dijkgraaf FRSE (Dutch: born 24 January 1960) is a Dutch theoretical physicist, mathematician and string theorist, and the current Minister of Education, Culture and Science in the Netherlands. From July 2012 until ...

and VPRO broadcast. In January, she was invited by

Dell Dell is an American based technology company. It develops, sells, repairs, and supports computers and related products and services. Dell is owned by its parent company, Dell Technologies. Dell sells personal computers (PCs), Server (computin ...

to participate in the “VR for Good” panel at the 2018

Consumer Electronics Show CES (; formerly an initialism for Consumer Electronics Show) is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event typi ...

to demonstrate how innovators are using virtual reality to make a positive impact on society. Since June 2019, she has served as Chief Editor of VR and Industry for ''Frontiers in Virtual Reality'' Journal.

Awards

* 2007 – awarded the IEEE VGTC Virtual Reality Technical Achievement Award, in recognition of the development of the CAVE. * 2009 – International Digital Media and Arts Association (iDMMa) awarded her the Distinguished Career Award * 2014 – Arkansas Research Alliance Scholar * 2016 – Polygon website's Top 25 VR Innovators award * 2016 – University Herald website's named her as one of the three greatest female innovators in virtual reality * 2018 – In February 2018 Dr. Cruz-Neira was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. * 2018 – Association for Computer Machinery (ACM), named Computer Pioneer.

References

External links

* Video
The Mind of The Universe (2017), episode 8
on YouTube {{DEFAULTSORT:Cruz-Neira, Carolina Living people American computer scientists Virtual reality pioneers American women computer scientists Universidad Metropolitana alumni University of Illinois Chicago alumni University of Louisiana at Lafayette faculty Year of birth missing (living people) University of Arkansas at Little Rock faculty University of Central Florida faculty Engineers from Arkansas Iowa State University faculty American women academics 21st-century American women