Tom DeFanti, PhD, is a research scientist at the University of California, San Diego, and a distinguished professor emeritus of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He was co-Chair of SIGGRAPH'79, SIGGRAPH Secretary from 1977-1981 and Chair from 1981-1985.He is recipient of the 1988 ACM Outstanding Contribution Award and was appointed an ACM Fellow in 1994 and received the SIGGRAPH Outstanding Service Award in 2000. He is also a Fellow of International Engineering Consortium. He shares recognition along with UIC Professor Emeritus Dan Sandin for conceiving the CAVE in 1991, first shown at Maxine Brown’s SIGGRAPH’92.