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Thomas Butkiewicz
Center for Coastal & Ocean Mapping/Joint Hydrographic Center
Jere A. Chase Ocean Engineering Lab
24 Colovos Road
Durham, New Hampshire 03824
Thomas Butkiewicz received a B.S. in Computer Science in 2005 from Ithaca College, focusing on computer graphics and virtual reality research. During his graduate studies at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, he designed and developed new interactive geospatial visualization techniques, receiving a master's (2007) and Ph.D. (2010) in Computer Science. After a year as a research scientist at The Charlotte Visualization Center, he joined the Joint Hydrographic Center as a post-doctoral research fellow. In 2012, he joined the faculty as a research assistant professor. In 2021, he took over duties as director of the Data Visualization Research Lab and, in 2023, he was promoted to research associate professor.
Dr. Butkiewicz specializes in creating highly interactive visualizations, which allow users to perform complex visual analysis on geospatial datasets through unique, intuitive exploratory techniques. His research interests include virtual and augmented reality, stereoscopic displays, human visual perception, and image processing/computer vision. His current research projects focus on using augmented reality to aid safe and efficient marine navigation, immersive telepresence, methods for integrating advanced data visualization methods within electronic navigational chart displays, and designing and developing new exploratory visual analysis environments for dynamic 4D ocean simulations. This includes experimentation with new visualization and interaction techniques as well as new hardware combinations, such as stereoscopic displays with multi-touch surfaces.