Barbara Maria Stafford, an internationally recognized scholar of visualization at the forefront of dialog on the relation between cultural uses of images and medical, scientific, and technological research, will be Visiting Professor at Georgia Tech.

Stafford's two years on campus will be supported in part by the H. Bruce McEver Program for Engineering and the Liberal Arts. She will focus on interdisciplinary work spanning bioengineering and the cognitive and neurosciences in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture's Digital Media (DM) program, the College of Engineering's Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering schools (ME, BME), and the College of Computing.

Ivan Allen College Interim Dean Kenneth J. Knoespel said, "Barbara Stafford's visit affirms the purpose of the McEver Program which encourages work at the intersection of technology and society. It will serve as a catalyst for the multiple Georgia Tech communities working on integrated design in the curriculum and problem-based learning."

Stafford is recognized for her extraordinary ability to think outside the disciplinary boundaries of the arts and neuroscience and the implications for the future of education: "The idea being that we bring much-needed new data to one another's research agendas." Her most recent book Echo Objects (University of Chicago Press, 2007) demonstrates the importance of the arts and humanities and their critical role in understanding neurophysiology and cognition for rapidly expanded work in all disciplines with technologies of visualization.

Stafford is the William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor Emerita in the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago. She holds an MA degree from Northwestern University and a PhD from the University of Chicago. She has written extensively on visual culture and is the author of numerous books published by MIT Press. Stafford is co-curator of the exhibition Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen, at the Getty Museum. She has received awards and fellowships from numerous institutions including the Smithsonian Institute, Guggenheim Foundation, and the Getty Research Institute. She has served on advisory committees on neurophysiology for the American Academy of Sciences. In 2006, Stafford delivered an invited lecture at the High Museum in conjunction with the Louvre-Atlanta Exhibition that focused attention on the relation between digital technology and the future of the museum.

Stafford will teach a McEver Seminar for undergraduate students focusing attention on the design practices in different disciplines and the problems posed by the rapid expansion of visualization technologies. She will give a graduate seminar (open to undergraduates with permission) on Neural-Aesthetics and Design. Stafford will offer workshops for faculty involved in building courses in senior design in ME and BME. Stafford will also work with senior faculty to further develop initiatives and curriculum under the NSF Directorates of Design and Education.

Her appointment at Georgia Tech begins in August, 2010.