Doug Bowman, professor of computer science in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech, has been awarded the Frank J. Maher Professorship in Engineering by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors.

Virginia Tech alumnus Bruce Vorhauer, who received his bachelor's degree in engineering mechanics in 1964, endowed the professorship in honor of Frank Maher, who received a master's degree in civil engineering in 1937 and was a professor in Virginia Tech's department of engineering mechanics, now called the Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics.

A member of the Virginia Tech faculty since 1999, Bowman is a world leader in research in 3-D interfaces for computers and virtual reality, a visualization technique sometimes referred to as "computer-simulated reality" whose uses in education and training, the arts, science, and urban design are now being explored.

Bowman has more than 120 peer-reviewed publications, the majority of which are in selective journals and conferences. His Google Scholar publication citation count is more than 7,700, verifying the impact of his work on his research field.

He was lead author of the first textbook on 3D user interfaces, "3D User Interfaces: Theory and Practice," published in 2005.

Bowman has received more than $8.5 million in external funding for his research, with a personal share exceeding $3.1 million.

In 2015, Bowman received the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Visualization and Graphics Technical Committee of the IEEE Computer Society¹s Technical Achievement Award in Virtual Reality, the highest honor in the IEEE virtual reality community. He also was received the ACM Distinguished Scientist award in 2010, the Georgia Tech Graphics, Visualization and Usability Center Impact Award in 2012, and an NSF CAREER Award in 2003.

In addition, Bowman and his students have multiple best paper awards and have won several international IEEE 3DUI (three dimensional user interface) competitions.

An extraordinary research mentor, Bowman has graduated 14 Ph.D. students, six of whom are now in academe, and two have won departmental best thesis awards, and 10 master's degree students, two of whom received departmental best thesis awards.

He also integrates undergraduate researchers into his projects, a total of 22 research mentees to date.

Bowman has served as director of the Center for Human-Computer Interaction since 2011 and as a Fellow of the Institute for Creativity, Arts and Technology since 2015.

Bowman received his bachelor's degree from Emory University and a master¹s degree and Ph.D. from Georgia Tech.

 

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