DeFanti, Thomas

1948–

Virtual Reality and Networking Technologies Specialist

Thomas DeFanti is an important figure in the fields of virtual reality (VR), computer graphics, and high-speed broadband networks, and is co-inventor of the “virtual-reality theater” known as the CAVE at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). A professor whose research contributions span the concepts of technology and art, DeFanti is also co-director of the Electronic Visualization Lab (EVL) at UIC, along with fellow CAVE inventor Dan Sandin.

DeFanti was born on September 18, 1948, and grew up in Queens, New York. He was the second child of Charles L. and Madeline K. DeFanti, both civil servants who worked for the New York City Department of Sanitation. He graduated from Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan and, like his brother Charles, became a professor. While his passion was (and is) for photography, his skill in math, science, and languages led him to a career in computer science.

DeFanti recalls that he was “extraordinarily dumb-struck” when, as a graduate student at Ohio State, he discovered Charles Csuri's Computer Graphics Research Group lab and studio. It was there that DeFanti realized that he could combine his interest in image production with his abilities in computing. DeFanti earned his master's degree in computer and information science from Ohio State in 1970, and his Ph.D. from the same school in 1973. After four years as a university fellow and research assistant at Ohio State, DeFanti took a job in 1973 as an assistant professor at UIC, and he has remained there ever since, taking on the title of full professor in 1988.

DeFanti hooked up with media artist Sandin at UIC's EVL, combining their abilities in computer graphics and video imaging. Maxine Brown, a UIC colleague since 1977, joined EVL in 1986, and proceeded to market the lab to potential benefactors. Prior to that, DeFanti recalls, he and Sandin had paid for work at the lab with “very small grants” and through their own personal consulting fees.

In 1986, DeFanti and Sandin connected with Larry Smarr, founder of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Recognizing the potential of the DeFanti-Sandin-Brown team, Smarr funded their work; he also introduced the group to key people at the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the agency that created the Internet's predecessor, the ARPANET. DeFanti recalls that Rick Stevens of the U.S. Energy Department's Argonne National Lab, also impressed by EVL's work, provided both funds and important network engineering support for their research. The lab now brings in about $5 million a year.

With assistance from a variety of students and programmers, DeFanti and Sandin's work over the years culminated in 1991, with the design and construction of the virtual-reality laboratory, CAVE. The recursive acronym CAVE stands for “CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment,” but it doubly references Plato's allegory, “The Simile of the Cave.” The lab unites video, audio, and database technologies to create collaborative virtual environments aimed at facilitating everything from new designs in architecture to new forms of distance medicine and new vistas for interactive art. Formed in the early 1990s, the CAVE remains at the forefront of virtual-reality experimentation.

...