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Position Summary:
The Research Assistant Professor for Immersive Environments provides dynamic leadership for a growing body of programs in creative technologies and immersive environments within the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology ( ICAT ). This position leads and participates in immersive and augmented reality environment research teams as full-scale project manager, collaborative contributor, and/or facility technical support. Using Maya, Zbrush, Unity, After Effects, Unreal Engine, Max/ MSP , Autopano Video, and other emerging applications, the immersive environments specialist conducts research intended to use and advance ICAT's world-leading immersive environment facilities, produces content for use in a variety of virtual and augmented reality applications, assumes limited instructional responsibilities, and produces peer-reviewed papers and technical documentation.
Key responsibilities include:
1. Immersive environment research and development
- Design and execute independent departmental research projects and manage collaborative efforts of multidisciplinary research teams.
- In collaboration with Collaborative Technologies + Experiences teaching faculty, design and execute research projects for incorporation into curricula and provide hands-on technology experience and research opportunities for CT+E students.
- Lead research teams to implement immersive environments and simulations by integrating them into existing pipelines.
- Interface with information technology staff and other researchers to maintain and expand the pipelines for immersive 360 video, virtual reality, augmented reality, and motion capture.
- Help manage the use of the Cube and other related studios.
- Rearrange and troubleshoot systems on a per-project basis and support a need-based dynamic research environment.
2. Sponsored research activity
- Initiate sponsored research proposals, including establishing collaborative research teams, leading project design efforts, and serving as principal investigator.
- Contribute to other faculty members' project proposals by providing technical, budgetary, and execution expertise and serving as co-PI, senior personnel, or key personnel as appropriate; manage project execution and deliverables components requiring use of ICAT equipment or facilities.
- Collaborate with other researchers to develop projects in Maya and Unity by creating assets in sound as well as visual, building environments, and programming simulation behavior.
- Create and manipulate images and models using 2D and 3D computer graphics software, working closely with researchers to design assets for the immersive environment.
- Create or modify animation of 3D models including the use of motion capture.
3. Author technical documents and publish peer-reviewed academic papers
- Submit scholarly papers to academic journals and conference for presentations and publications on ICAT projects and facilities.
- Create project plans that include storyboards, technical requirements analyses, and roles and responsibilities of parties involved.
- Create, update, and maintain usage manuals for ICAT research equipment and processes.
4. Teaching and creative work
- Teach one academic course per year.
- Supervise 2-3 graduate students.
- Instruct students in the use of ICAT facilities and equipment to develop multidisciplinary projects.
- Lead workshops for faculty and staff on the use of ICAT facilities and equipment.
- Produce creative work outputs at a national level.

Required Qualifications:
- PhD or terminal degree in fine arts, industrial design, computer science, electrical engineering, or related discipline with an emphasis on new media or game development.
- Strong programming experience and adaptability to a variety of programming languages.
- Demonstrated record of applying creative and artistic aptitude to projects.
- Record of successfully setting and meeting deadlines.
- Experience in collaborative work environments requiring teamwork and well-developed ability to work well with others.
- Strong communication skills.

Preferred Qualifications:
The ideal candidate will have some knowledge in all, and a proven track record in one or two, of the following areas:
- Development in Unity, Unreal Engine, C#, and/or C++,
- The motion capture production pipeline, preferably with Qualisys and/or Optitrack systems,- Modeling and animation within Maya and/or ZBrush as well as importing assets into Unity and/or Unreal Engine,
- The Maya rendering pipeline using Renderman and/or for 360 video,
- 360 video editing and encoding in AutoPano Video and After Effects.
- Max/ MSP Programming and Sound Design



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