About Dr. Cox
Bio
Dr. Donna J. Cox is the Michael Aiken Chair, Director of the Advanced Visualization Laboratory (AVL) at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), Director of Illinois eDream Institute at the NCSA, and Professor in the School of Art and Design, University of Illinois.
For over 30 years, she has researched art of scientific visualization. She organized the first “Renaissance Teams” as an interdisciplinary methodology to address visualization challenges. She is an international keynote speaker and serves on a variety of national panels. She has served as Director-at-Large and Experimental Technologies Chair for the SIGGRAPH Conference. The Chicago Museum of Science and Industry selected her as one of 40 modern Leonardo DaVinci’s. She and her collaborators have thrilled millions of people with stunning cinematic data visualizations of science for IMAX movies, feature films, PBS HD television, and large-screen digital museum shows around the world. AVL develops visualization software and display technologies. In collaboration with NCSA and the University of Illinois leadership, Cox helped form the eDream Institute to synergize innovation across the arts and sciences, supporting artists, faculty and students and creative productions such as the Tao of Bach. AVL and her team are currently working on a new fulldome digital planetarium show, “Solar Superstorms.” She is lead for the new NCSA Culture and Society theme.