Pat Hanrahan

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This article is about the computer scientist Pat Hanrahan. For the Australian writer, see Patrick Hanrahan

Pat Hanrahan is a computer graphics researcher and professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering in the Computer Graphics Laboratory at Stanford University. His research focuses on rendering algorithms, graphics processing units, and scientific illustration and visualization.

He received a Ph.D. in Biophysics from the University of Wisconsin in 1985. In the 1980s, he worked at the New York Institute of Technology Computer Graphics Laboratory, Digital Equipment Corporation, and Pixar. In 1989, he joined the faculty of Princeton University. In 1995, he moved to Stanford.

At Pixar, Hanrahan was part of the design of RenderMan Interface Specification and the RenderMan Shading Language.

Hanrahan was awarded a Technical Achievement Oscar in 2004, together with Stephen R. Marschner and Henrik Wann Jensen, for pioneering research in simulating subsurface scattering of light in translucent materials as presented in their paper "A Practical Model for Subsurface Light Transport.". He also received the 2003 SIGGRAPH Steven A. Coons Award for Outstanding Creative Contributions to Computer Graphics, for "leadership in rendering algorithms, graphics architectures and systems, and new visualization methods for computer graphics", and the 1993 SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.