Will Schroeder, Ken Martin, Bill Lorensen receive IEEE VIS 2021 Test of Time Award for VTK

October 27, 2021

Kitware congratulates Will Schroeder, Ph.D. and Ken Martin, Ph.D. on receiving the IEEE VIS 2021 Test of Time award for their paper on VTK, “The Design and Implementation of an Object-Oriented Toolkit for 3D Graphics and Visualization.” Written in 1996 by William J. Schroeder, Ken Martin, and William E. Lorensen, this paper is still relevant today and has largely impacted and influenced the visualization community and beyond. It describes the design and inspiration for a system that has become an open source foundation for visualization work worldwide. This paper and the related VTK textbooks have received thousands of citations, with more than a thousand citations combined in the past five years. The work presented in this paper is an example of work that shifted the field of visualization and showcased the open and transparent nature of science. 

Will and Ken expressed their gratitude at being given this award, and on behalf of Bill Lorensen, who passed away in 2019. You can watch Will and Ken’s acceptance speech here.

This award was presented in conjunction with the IEEE VIS 2021 conference. The conference serves as a forum for advances in theory, methods, and applications of visualization and visual analytics. 

1 comment to Will Schroeder, Ken Martin, Bill Lorensen receive IEEE VIS 2021 Test of Time Award for VTK

  1. Congratulations Will and Ken. I really liked the presentation. Such a nice touch having that huge list of collaborators display. The next 25 years will be even better. I remember using pcmaker and theTCL version of ParaView! How things have changed since then. I also tried to convince my workplace to embrace open source collaboration … all to no avail.

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