Kai Lawonn completed a Habilitation degree on “Visual Enhancement of Focus Structures in Selected Applications” (Otto von Guericke Universität Magdeburg, 2017), a PhD degree on “Illustrative Visualization of Medical Data Sets” in Computer Science (Otto von Guericke Universität Magdeburg, 2014), and a Diploma degree in Mathematics (Freie Universität Berlin, 2011). He has been a Visiting Scientist at Inria, TU Delft, and ETZ Zurich. Kai has been a Junior Professor at the University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany (2015-2019). Currently he is a Junior Professor at the University of Jena, Germany, where he is heading the Visualization and Explorative Data Analysis Group.
In his research Kai Lawonn has made considerable contributions to visual analytics and medical visualization in areas like illustrative visualization, multi-modal visualization, and blood flow exploration. His research interests are quite broad and cover also topics like cultural heritage, flow visualization, real-time multi-parameter exploration, and virtual / augmented reality.
Kai Lawonn has a strong and rapidly growing research and publication record, where he is publishing at the best venues in our field. Examples include the IEEE Visualization Conference, the EG/VGTC Conference on Visualization, the IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics Journal, and the Computer Graphics Forum Journal. After his PhD in 2014, he authored 42 publications (23 journal publications in CGF, TVCG, IEEE CG&A as well as Computers & Graphics). His overall achievement (including the PhD time) comprises 75 publications, including 42 journal publications.
He has already secured several research fundings, e.g., from the German Research Council (DFG). Kai Lawonn has received several awards and honors (CGF, VCBM, BVM, VMV, EG PhD Award). In addition to Kai’s scientific success, he engages very actively in teaching on a diverse set of topics. Examples include: medical visualization, mesh processing, medical image processing, illustrative visualizaiton, and visual analytics.
Kai has been taking an active role in providing expertise and services for the visualization community at large and for EuroVis in special. One example is EuroRV3, the EuroVis Workshop on Reproducibility, Verification, and Validation in Visualization, where he repeatedly has been the chair. Kai has already been able to initiate and maintain a strong network of international research collaborations with top experts in the field.
EuroVis is pleased to recognize Kai Lawonn with the EuroVis Young Researcher Award 2020.