Julie Dorsey designated the Beinecke Professor of Computer Science

Julie Dorsey, recently appointed as the Frederick W. Beinecke Professor of Computer Science, focuses her research on computer graphics, including sketch-based interfaces for early conceptual design; acceleration methods for real-time rendering; interactive visualization of complex scenes, with an application to urban environments; and the creation of detailed photorealistic renderings.

Dorsey’s contributions to the field of computer graphics include algorithms for lighting and acoustical design and visualization. She is particularly well known for her research in modeling the appearance of materials; for example, she pioneered techniques to model the visual richness of irregular metal patinas and eroded stone. Her current research interests include material and texture models, inverse procedural modeling, elevating the medium of drawing, and creative applications of artificial intelligence.    

At Yale, Dorsey co-directs the Computer Graphics Group in the Department of Computer Science, and serves as the director of undergraduate studies for computing and the arts, an interdepartmental major that combines the in-depth study of computer science with one of five arts disciplines (architecture, art, history of art, music, or theater studies).

Dorsey came to Yale in 2002 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she held tenured appointments in both the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the School of Architecture. She received undergraduate degrees in architecture and graduate degrees in computer science from Cornell University.  

Dorsey’s current and recent professional activities include service as the editor-and-chief of ACM Transactions on Graphics, and membership on the editorial boards of Foundations and Trends in Computer Graphics and Vision, Computers and Graphics, and IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.

The Yale professor is the recipient of several professional awards, including MIT’s Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award and a National Science Foundation Career Award. She has received fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale, and the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard. In 2018, she won Microsoft’s international Female Founders Competition. She is co-author of “Digital Modeling of Material Appearance,” and the founder of Mental Canvas, Inc., a Yale spinout company that is developing a new type of interactive graphical media and a software system to design and share this form of media.