Ravi Ramamoorthi

Ravi Ramamoorthi serves as Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego within the Jacobs School of Engineering, where he directs the UC San Diego Center for Visual Computing.

His academic foundation includes a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley, establishing his expertise in computational visual phenomena.

Professor Ramamoorthi's research pioneers physically-based rendering and inverse vision problems, with seminal contributions to spherical harmonic lighting, frequency analysis of rendering, and neural radiance fields. His work bridges theoretical computer graphics with practical applications in virtual reality and computational photography, fundamentally advancing how light transport is modeled and reconstructed.

His exceptional contributions have earned recognition through:

• ACM Fellow (2017) for transformative work in rendering and physics-based vision
• ACM Distinguished Member (2015)
• Eurographics Outstanding Technical Contribution Award (2015)
• SIGGRAPH Significant New Researcher Award (2005)

He actively mentors graduate students while securing research funding from the National Science Foundation and technology partners, driving innovations in real-time rendering and appearance capture. His leadership extends to organizing major conferences and serving on editorial boards for top-tier graphics publications.

The Center for Visual Computing under his direction integrates computer vision, graphics, and machine learning research, fostering collaborations across academia and industry to solve complex visual perception challenges.