Biography | Publications
Dr. Lisa Sobierajski Avila is Vice President and a lead technical developer at Kitware, Inc. At Kitware, Dr. Avila is focused on volume rendering of large structured and unstructured data, as well as high-performance computing using GPU processing techniques.  Dr. Avila applies her current research and nearly 20 years of experience in data visualization to a wide array of fields including medical imaging, oil and gas exploration, and scientific visualization.

Dr. Avila received her B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1989, 1990, and 1994, respectively. While at Stony Brook, she developed visualization techniques that were incorporated into a cranio-facial surgical planning system used at Montefiore Medical Center. Dr. Avila was one of two primary developers of the VolVis system for volume visualization; her thesis was focused on the creation of global illumination models for volumetric data. Dr. Avila was also active in the area of hardware-assisted acceleration methods for volume rendering, and she worked closely with researchers at Howard Hughes Medical Institute to apply volume visualization to problems in neurobiology.

Prior to joining Kitware, Dr. Avila completed a post-doctoral position at Stony Brook and then joined the General Electric Corporate Research and Development center in 1994. At GE, she continued her work in the area of volume rendering, applying these methods to both medical and industrial data. Dr. Avila began working in the area of haptics, and she developed and patented algorithms for visualizing, modifying and feeling volumetric data. Working with GE Aircraft Engines, she led the development of a state-of-the-art application for exploration and analysis of large geometric databases.

Dr. Avila is a member of the VGTC Executive Committee, and has served on the editorial board for the IEEE publication Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics. She teaches courses in volume visualization at both the ACM SIGGRAPH and IEEE Visualization conferences on a regular basis, has served on various conference committees and is a reviewer for numerous technical conferences and journals.


Publications