John C. Hart is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he studies computer graphics and data visualization. Prof. Hart received his Ph.D. in 1991 from the Electronic Visualization Laboratory of the University of Illinois at Chicago. His work over the past 30 years has been supported by Adobe, AT&T, DARPA, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Nokia, NVIDIA and the NSF, and he has partnered with industry on graphics hardware, visual effects, game engine tools and medical imaging. He is the graphics area editor for ACM Books, a past Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Graphics, a past member of the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee, a co-author of “Real-Time Shading,” a contributing author to “Texturing and Modeling: A Procedural Approach,” and an executive producer of the documentary “The Story of Computer Graphics.”

Prof. Hart is also the Director of Online Programs for the Department of Computer Science. He designed the MCS-DS, an innovative new Master of Computer Science degree curriculum that focuses on data science, and launched it on the Coursera MOOC online learning platform. This scalable online platform allows the University of Illinois to better fulfill its land-grant public educational mission by offering an affordable masters degree education in the high-demand areas of computer and data science to a broader student body. Prof. Hart’s Data Visualization MOOC has reached over 365,000 learners worldwide in the past three years.

Prof. Hart is also the Executive Associate Dean of the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He manages Graduate College operations, oversees the membership of the Graduate Faculty, shepherds the development and analyzes the performance of graduate degree programs, and serves ex-officio on the Senate Educational Policy Committee. In 2017, he was selected as a Fellow of the 2017 Big 10 Academic Leadership Program.