Ronald Azuma is a principal engineer and research manager for Intel Labs. His team pursues novel immersive experiences displaying photorealistic 3D environments captured by multi-camera arrays. Azuma's recent focus areas include computational displays and head-worn displays. Prior to Intel, he helped start the Nokia Research Center Hollywood and worked at HRL Laboratories.
Azuma is known for being a pioneer in AR and is generally credited with defining the term “Augmented Reality.” He built the first working AR system and is the author of the single most referenced publication in the field of AR, which was listed as one of “50 influential papers” from the entire history of MIT Press journal publications.
In 2016, Azuma became an IEEE Fellow. In 2022, he was elected an inaugural member of the IEEE VGTC [Visualization and Graphics Technical Community] Virtual Reality Academy, a recognition of career and lifetime achievements in VR/AR/MR. He received a B.S. from UC Berkeley in EECS and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from UNC Chapel Hill.