Donald H. House Chair of Visual Computing

Donald H. House recently joined Clemson University as Professor and Chair of Visual Computing within the School of Computing. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer and Information Science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a B.S. in Mathematics from Union College. He began his professional career in 1968 as a programmer and software engineer for the General Electric Company, where he nurtured a love for the craft of software construction, but at the same time some dismay at the invisibility of the elegance and intricate beauty of the product of this craft. This strongly motivated him to study of art, and to pursue a research career devoted to the study of vision, computer graphics and visualization. He began his academic career in 1978 as a Lecturer at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, serving for two years before leaving to pursue his PhD. He took his first regular academic position in 1984 at Williams College, where he helped to found and develop the Department of Computer Science. In 1993, he moved to Texas A&M University, where he played a key role in developing the curriculum and the faculty of the school's unique, interdisciplinary Master of Science program in Visualization Sciences, serving as Program Coordinator until 2003. He retired from Texas A&M in 2008 as Professor and founding member of the Department of Visualization, and Professor and Associate Head for Research of the Department of Architecture. In computer graphics, he is best known for the introduction of interacting-particle methods for the graphical simulation of woven cloth. This approach to the problem underlies most of the cloth and clothing simulation systems currently used in the production of computer animation. His volume Cloth Modeling and Animation, co-edited with David Breen, is a landmark research collection in the field. Also in simulation, he has recently been working on alternatives to Eulerian methods for fluid simulation. In visualization, he has been pursuing methods for the perceptual optimization of scientific and data visualizations.