Brian A. Barsky: Faculty Home Page
Brian A. Barsky
Professor Emeritus, Professor in the Graduate School
Biography
Brian A. Barsky is Professor of the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley with faculty affiliations in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS), Optometry, Vision Science, Bioengineering, Berkeley Institute of Design (BID), Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM), Arts Research Center (ARC), and Berkeley Canadian Studies Program.
He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Optometry (F.A.A.O.), a UC Berkeley Presidential Chair Fellow, a Warren and Marjorie Minner Faculty Fellow in Engineering Ethics and Professional/Social Responsibility, and an ACM Distinguished Speaker. Dr. Barsky was a recipient of an IBM Faculty Development Award and a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award.
He attended McGill University, Montréal, received a D.C.S. in engineering and a B.Sc. in mathematics and computer science. He studied computer graphics and computer science at Cornell University, Ithaca, where he earned an M.S. degree. His Ph.D. is in computer science from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City.
His research interests include computational aesthetics, computational photography, methods for the design and fabrication of contact lenses, computer methods for optometry and ophthalmology, image synthesis, spline curve/surface representations, computer aided geometric design and modeling, CAD/CAM/CIM, interactive and realistic three-dimensional computer graphics, visualization in scientific computing, computer aided cornea modeling and visualization, videokeratography techniques, corneal topographic mapping, medical imaging, virtual environments for surgical simulation, and display technology.
He developed Vision-Realistic Rendering using three-dimensional rendering techniques for the computer generation of synthetic images to simulate the vision of specific individuals based on measuring the wavefront aberrations of their eyes. This led to developing a vision-correcting display to enable specific viewer to see it in sharp focus directly without using any corrective eyewear such as eyeglasses or contact lenses. This was selected by Scientific American as one of 2014's ten "World Changing Ideas."
Education
1981, Ph.D., Computer Science, University of Utah, Salt Lake City
1978, M.S., Computer Graphics/Computer Science, Cornell University
1976, B.Sc., Mathematics/Computer Science, McGill University
1973, D.C.S., Engineering, McGill University
Research Areas
Biosystems & Computational Biology (BIO)
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
computer-aided geometric design & modeling visualization in scientific computing, computer-aided cornea modeling and visualization, computational optometry