Newsroom

CORVALLIS - Imagine climbing in through the screen of a computer running a 3-D animated football game and standing up on the other side to find yourself surrounded by an animated field with players that look so real you drop and curl into the fetal position when the defensive line swarms you and the crowd noise goes deafening.

If Oregon State University assistant professor of computer science Ron Metoyer has his way, future college quarterbacks will use the technology he's developing to train in just this way.

But Metoyer's research using computer graphics technology to create large, "immersive environments" the size of two-car garages goes well beyond the gridiron.

Metoyer, a second-year faculty member in the OSU College of Engineering, hopes his research will also result in realistic-looking training environments. In these environments, firefighters, security personnel, military soldiers and others can train - by moving, spinning, reacting, climbing, running and rolling - in large rooms where computer animations are projected on walls and ceilings to simulate real-world fires, building evacuations, battlefields, and more. In March, the National Science Foundation took notice of Metoyer's research, awarding him a prestigious Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award worth $493,672 over five years. The funding will support Metoyer and several graduate students in the OSU School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

"I'm very excited about the CAREER award," Metoyer said. "I worked hard to put together an exciting proposal and I'm glad the NSF reviewers felt it was worthy of support. The OSU computer science department has been completely supportive and has created an environment for new faculty to succeed. And the students have been outstanding - at both the graduate and undergraduate levels."

Metoyer received his doctorate from the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2001 where he was a member of the Graphics, Visualization and Usability Center.