William B. Cowan

Most Recent Affiliation(s):

• National Research Council of Canada, Associate Professor

Location:

• Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

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Bio:

• SIGGRAPH 1989

  William Cowan is currently an associate professor in the Computer Science Department and director of the Computer Graphics Laboratory at the University of Waterloo. He received a PhD in statistical physics from McGill University in 1976, then learned color psychophysics while working with the late Gunter Wyszecki at the National Research Council of Canada. He has been at the University of Waterloo since July 1988.  His research interests lie mainly in areas of color and computer graphics, color appearance, color reproduction, color design, color standards and image quality. In addition he actively works on operating systems and programming principles for multi-processor real-time systems, one of which is the human brain. His particular interest is the development of the architecture of the visual cortex. In his spare time he lives beside a lake  with one wife, three children and no dog.  

  SIGGRAPH 1984

  William B. Cowan is a research officer in the Division of Physics at the National Research Council of Canada. He received his Ph.D. in physics at McGill University. After several years of postdoctoral research in physics, he joined the NRCC to work in the psychophysics of color. His research interests include the internal representation of color, incorporating psychophysical knowledge into computer graphics and using interactive graphics systems for psychophysical experimentation.

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Course Organizer:

• SIGGRAPH 1983, "Color Perception"
• SIGGRAPH 1985, "Color Perception"