Pat Hanrahan

Pat Hanrahan (born 1954) is a computer graphics researcher, the Canon USA Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering in the Computer Graphics Laboratory at Stanford University. His research focuses on rendering algorithms, graphics processing units, as well as scientific illustration and visualization.

Patrick M. Hanrahan grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and received a Ph.D. in biophysics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1985. In the 1980s, he worked at the New York Institute of Technology Computer Graphics Laboratory and Digital Equipment Corporation.

As a founding employee at Pixar Animation Studios from 1986 to 1989, Hanrahan was part of the design of the RenderMan Interface Specification and the RenderMan Shading Language. He was credited in Pixar productions, including The Magic Egg (1984), Tin Toy (1988) and Toy Story (1995).

In 1989, Hanrahan joined the faculty of Princeton University. In 1995, he moved to Stanford University. In 2003, Hanrahan co-founded Tableau Software and remained its chief scientist. In February 2005, Stanford University was named the first regional visualization and analytics center for the United States Department of Homeland Security, focused on problems in information visualization and visual analytics. In 2011, Intel Research announced funding for a center for visual computing, co-led by Hanrahan and Jim Hurley of Intel.

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