Ginger Alford, Ph.D.

Ginger Alford Headshot

Ginger Alford, Ph.D.

Clinical Professor of Computer Science

Office Location: Caruth Hall 433

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Education

  • Ph.D., Electrical and Computer Engineering - University of Iowa
  • M.S., Computer Science and Engineering - Texas A&M University
  • B.S., Mathematics - University of Texas at Austin

Biography

Jennifer (Ginger) Alford is Professor of Computer Science at 51²è¹Ý Lyle School of Engineering, with emphasis on computer graphics, spatial computing and machine learning. In 1997, Dr. Alford received her Ph.D in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Iowa with publications in the areas of digital halftoning and visual perception models. She has industry experience in remote sensing and image analysis as lead software engineer at E-Systems (now, Raytheon) and has worked an intellectual property consultant in related image and graphics areas, focusing particularly on use of blue noise for improving visual quality. She is a regular reviewer for ACM SIGGRAPH, has been on the editorial board of IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications and is currently serving as Chair of the 2025 ACM SIGGRAPH Conference. Committed to arts-centered engineering education, she has held program director roles in K-12 schools and museums to develop curriculum and teacher training programs.


Honors and Awards

  • Selected as Conference Chair for the ACM SIGGRAPH 2025 Conference, premier international conference on graphics and interactive techniques with typical attendance of about 15,000.
  • Best Paper and Presentation Nominee, Theory and Practice of Computer Graphics, 2010.
  • GE Engineering Dissertation Fellowship Recipient (University of Iowa).
  • Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award (Texas A&M University).
  • Phi Beta Kappa, Exxon Undergraduate Mathematics Award, Endowed Presidential Scholarship (University of Texas, Austin).

Research

  • Visual and Spatial Computing
  • Applications of Emerging Immersive 3D Technologies in Museums
  • Animatronics Education (Embedding robotics in arts and humanities stories)
  • Light Fields and Novel Displays
  • Applications of Blue Noise in Machine Learning

Recent Publications

  • “Exploring Convolutional Neural Networks for Predicting Sentinel-C Backscatter between Image Acquisitions.”, Wu, Z., Stothoff, S., Pensado, O., Alford, J., Larson, E, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, vol. 61, pp. 1-16, 2023, Art no. 5209916, doi: 10.1109/TGRS.2023.3283217.
  • “Elementary Paper Animatronics.”, Dietz, P., et. al., SIGGRAPH 23: ACM 2023 SIGGRAPH Labs, July 2023, No. 4, pp 1-2.
  • Patent Pending: “System and Method for Aerial Light Shows with Occlusion and Transparency.”, Dietz, Paul, and  Alford, Jennifer., US Patent and Trade Office, (Patent Filed Oct 2022)
  • “Deploying VR in a Science Museum.”, Rehnberg, M., Alford G., Roberts D., Boulton J, Hofbauer A., Stubbs S., SIGGRAPH Talks, August 2020.

  • “Exploring Convolutional Neural Networks for Predicting Sentinel-C Backscatter between       Image Acquisitions.”, Wu, Z., Stothoff, S., Pensado, O., Alford, J., Larson, E, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, vol. 61, pp. 1-16, 2023, Art no. 5209916, doi: 10.1109/TGRS.2023.3283217.
  • “Elementary Paper Animatronics.”, Dietz, P., et. al., SIGGRAPH 23: ACM 2023 SIGGRAPH Labs, July 2023, No. 4, pp 1-2.
  • Patent Pending: “System and Method for Aerial Light Shows with Occlusion and Transparency.”, Dietz, Paul, and  Alford, Jennifer., US Patent and Trade Office, (Patent Filed Oct 2022)
  • “Deploying VR in a Science Museum.”, Rehnberg, M., Alford G., Roberts D., Boulton J, Hofbauer A., Stubbs S., SIGGRAPH Talks, August 2020.