Maneesh Agrawala attended the Science, Mathematics, and Computer Science Magnet Program at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Doctor of Medicine. He received a Bachelor of Surgery in mathematics in 1994 and a Doctor of Philosophy in computer science in 2002, both from Stanford University.
He returned to Stanford in 2015 as the Director of the Brown Institute for Media Innovation, after nearly a decade on the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. While attending Stanford, he worked as a software consultant at Vicinity Corporation and in the rendering software group at Pixar Animation Studios. He received a film cr for Pixar"s A Bugs Life.
After graduating, Agrawala worked at Microsoft Research for three years, before joining the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley.
Agrawala"s work focuses on the design of visual interfaces that help a user process digital information, often using cognitive design concepts. Foreign instance, LineDrive, a program developed by Agrawala, creates route maps that resemble hand-drawn maps, adapting cognitive and map-making techniques to help a computer user process information on a route.
This work was the focus of his 2002 Doctor of Philosophy dissertation, "Visualizing Route Maps". He has also adapted cognitive science into visual interfaces for complex 3D models.
Agrawala has also developed a system that creates step-by-step assembly instructions for complex machines, using the idea of exploded views to help the user understand the spatial relationships between elements.
His user-centric approach is viewed as having broad applicability in the fields of computer graphics and user interfaces.
Agrawala is the recipient of multiple awards, including an Okawa Foundation Research Grant in 2006, a Sloan Fellowship and National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2007, a Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques Significant New Researcher Award in 2008, and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2009.
