Hanspeter Pfister is a co-winner of 2009 Petra T. Shattuck Award in teaching

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – June 4, 2009 – Hanspeter Pfister, Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Computer Science and Director of Visual Computing at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) is a co-winner of the 2009 Petra T. Shattuck Excellence in Teaching Award.

The annual award was established by the Harvard Extension School in memory of Dr. Petra T. Shattuck, a distinguished and dedicated teacher in the program.

Pfister, who began teaching at Extension in 1999 when he was still working at the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, has offered a wide variety of popular courses on computer graphics and visual computation.

During the past decade, he has become increasingly well known for his engaging lecture style and ability to connect with students.

One of his recent students wrote: "Prof. Pfister is outstanding ... and his Visualization class is very inspiring. He is very accessible and participates in forum discussions with the students."

Another added, “I was blown away by his professionalism and the way he taught. His vast knowledge of the topics and ability to bring in interesting guest speakers made his classes the most memorable in my Harvard experience!"

In light of such praise, Henry Leitner, Senior Lecturer on Computer Science, Associate Dean for Information Technology and Director of the ALM in IT program at the Harvard Extension, says the honor is particularly fitting.

"It is undoubtedly no accident that most of the Extension School's ALM in IT thesis prizes awarded over the past few years have been to students whose research was supervised by Hanspeter,” he says.

Pfister's research lies at the intersection of visualization, computer graphics, and computer vision, spanning a wide range of topics such as visualization, computational photography, point-based graphics, appearance modeling, 3D television, and face recognition.

"When we brought Hans in to Harvard SEAS, we knew he was an outstanding researcher,” says Greg Morrisett, Allen B. Cutting Professor of Computer Science and Associate Dean for Computer Science and Engineering. “But we were delighted to find out he's also an excellent teacher!"

He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science in 1996 from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and his M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, Switzerland, in 1991.

Prior to his appointment at Harvard in 2007, Pfister worked for 11 years at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories where he was most recently Associate Director and Senior Research Scientist. Pfister was the chief architect of VolumePro, Mitsubishi Electric’s award-winning real-time volume rendering hardware for PCs.