Denis Gracanin is an Assoc. Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech in the USA. He will be a visiting researcher in Vienna from February 1 to May 31, 2021, conducting his work at VRVis at the intersection of extended reality (XR) and smart immersive environments, with a focus on contextual visualization in immersive environments (Multimodal Immersive Analytics).
Prior to his planned stay at VRVis in Vienna, Denis Gracanin visited his family in Europe - and is currently also in home office at his relatives' place several hundred kilometers away from Vienna due to corona-related travel restrictions. Working from home brings many benefits, but also challenges as Denis Gracanin's research activities involve designing and conducting user studies. Without access to a physical lab and its associated equipment, he has to find new creative ways every day to continue his research work despite all constraints. On the other hand, the digital research residency and online collaboration allow him to more easily engage his students in different locations around the globe in his research activities at VRVis. However, the computer scientist sees one of the greatest advantages of his guest professorship above all in the possibility of being able to concentrate on very specific research problems and pursue new ideas by temporarily dispensing with his teaching and supervisory activities. Being able to devote himself entirely to research for a short time is something that often comes up short in the everyday lives of busy scientists like Denis Gracanin.
Denis Gracanin is a long-time scientific partner of VRVis. He has co-authored numerous high-profile publications with the Interactive Visualization research group around group leader Kresimir Matkovic. Many of these collaborations (papers as well as posters) have received awards at conferences such as VIS or CGI.