Maneesh Agrawala (born 1972) is a professor of computer science at Stanford University. He returned to Stanford in 2015 as the director of the Brown Institute for Media Innovation, after nearly a decade on the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley.

Life and work

Maneesh Agrawala attended the Science, Mathematics, and Computer Science Magnet Program at

Montgomery Blair High School Montgomery Blair High School (MBHS) is a public high school located in Four Corners, Maryland, United States, operated by Montgomery County Public Schools. The school's total enrollment of 3,600 makes it the largest public high school in Montgo ...

Silver Spring, MD Silver Spring is a census-designated place (CDP) in southeastern Montgomery County, Maryland, United States, near Washington, D.C. Although officially unincorporated, in practice it is an edge city, with a population of 81,015 at the 2020 cens ...

, where he was part of a team (including Howard Gobioff) that won a supercomputer in the 1988 SuperQuest competition. He was a finalist in the 1990

Westinghouse Science Talent Search Westinghouse may refer to: Businesses Current companies *Westinghouse Electric Corporation, the company that manages the Westinghouse brand, with licensees: **Westinghouse Electric Company, providing nuclear power-related services ** Westingho ...

. He received a B.S. in mathematics in 1994 and a Ph.D. in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includi ...

in 2002, both from Stanford University. While attending Stanford, he worked as a software consultant at Vicinity Corporation and in the rendering software group at

Pixar Animation Studios Pixar Animation Studios (commonly known as Pixar () and stylized as P I X A R) is an American computer animation studio known for its critically and commercially successful computer animated feature films. It is based in Emeryville, Californ ...

. He received a film credit for Pixar's A Bugs Life. After graduating, Agrawala worked at Microsoft Research for three years, before joining the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. Agrawala's work focuses on the design of visual interfaces that help a user process digital information, often using cognitive design concepts. For instance, LineDrive, a program developed by Agrawala, creates route maps that resemble hand-drawn maps, adapting cognitive and map-making techniques to help a computer user process information on a route. This work was the focus of his 2002 Ph.D. dissertation, "Visualizing Route Maps". He has also adapted cognitive science into visual interfaces for complex 3D models. Agrawala has also developed a system that creates step-by-step assembly instructions for complex machines, using the idea of exploded views to help the user understand the spatial relationships between elements. His user-centric approach is viewed as having broad applicability in the fields of computer graphics and user interfaces. Agrawala is the recipient of multiple awards, including an Okawa Foundation Research Grant in 2006, a

Sloan Fellowship The Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded annually by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation since 1955 to "provide support and recognition to early-career scientists and scholars". This program is one of the oldest of its kind in the United States. ...

and NSF CAREER Award in 2007, a SIGGRAPH Significant New Researcher Award in 2008, and a

MacArthur Foundation Fellowship The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 indi ...

in 2009.