The 2013 virtual reality career award

The 2013 virtual reality career award goes to Henry Fuchs, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for his lifetime contributions to research and practice in virtual environments, telepresence, and medical applications. Since the 1970s, Henry Fuchs has made pioneer contributions to many of the technologies needed to enable virtual and augmented reality: automatic construction of 3D models and scenes, fast rendering algorithms (BSP Trees), graphics hardware (Pixel-Planes), large-area tracking systems (HiBall), optical and video see-through head-mounted displays. Many of these advances were inspired by demanding applications such as augmenting visualization for surgical assistance (by merging real and virtual objects) and teleimmersion for remote medical consultation. He continues to innovate within a multi-national telepresence research center with sites at ETH Zurich, NTU Singapore, and UNC Chapel Hill. The IEEE VGTC is pleased to award Henry Fuchs the 2013 Virtual Reality Career Award.