Dr. Hong Hua

Dr. Hong Hua is currently a Professor with the James C. Wyant College of Optical Sciences (OSC), The University of Arizona. With over 25 years of experience, Dr. Hua is widely recognized through academia and industry as an expert in 3D display technologies, complex visualization systems, image acquisition technologies, and optical engineering in general.  Dr. Hua’s current research focuses on a wide range of optical technologies enabling advanced 3D displays, especially head-worn display technologies for virtual and augmented reality applications, and microscopic and endoscopic imaging systems for medicine.  She is the recipient of many awards and honors, including Fellow of SPIE, OSA and National Academy of Inventors (NAI), Member of the IEEE VGTC VR Academy, Inaugural Class of Women of Impact at University of Arizona (2022), Finalist for the Innovator of the Year (Academia Category) in the Governor’s Celebration of Innovation Awards (2020, 2021, 2022), Finalist for the Tucson Women of Influence 2020 in the category of Technology Champion, faculty research awards by Google and Intel in 2016, being honored as a Xu Teli Visiting Chair Professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology in 2012, being honored as one of the five UA researchers at Leading Edge in 2010, and the NSF CAREER award in 2007. She and her students received Nine Best Paper or Distinguished Student Paper Awards at top scientific conferences by SPIE, SID, IEEE, and ACM. Hua holds more than 50 issued U.S. and foreign patents that have been licensed to companies and universities. She has published 250+ technical papers and presentations, including 100+ peer-reviewed journal and proceeding papers, 1 book, 3 book chapters, and numerous plenary speeches and invited colloquial addresses at academic institutions and major scientific conferences world-wide. She was a co-founder of one startup, served as a consultant for several companies, and served on the scientific advisory board of another company.

Dr. Hua’s service and leadership to the research community are multi-fold. She is currently the Chair-elect for the Information Acquisition, Processing, and Display (IAPD) division of OPTICA’s Board of Meetings. She was member of the OPTICA Fellow Members Committee and a member of the OPTICA award committee. She served as chair of scientific conferences, workshops, and symposia for several professional societies. For example, she has been a founding general chair of the OPTICA Topical Meeting on 3D Image Acquisition and Display held annually since 2016, co-chair of the 2012 OSA 3D Display Technology Incubator Meeting, chair of the 2009 OSA Symposium on the Future of 3D Display: the Market Place and the Technology, and co-chair of the 2008 OSA Workshop on Illumination Modulation. She also served for several IEEE and ACM conferences, such as been an Area Chair for the 2007 and 2012 ISMAR conferences, being a program committee member annually between 2007 and 2015 for ISMAR, IEEE Virtual Reality between 2010 and 2015, ACM Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST) between 2009 and 2011, International Conferences on Computer Vision (ICCV) in 2009 and 2010, International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) between 2009 and 2011.  Hua served as an associate editor for the Journal of Science Advances, was a guest editor for IEEE/OSA Journal of Display Technology, was a guest editor for Optics Express feature issues, and was consulting editor for the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. Finally, she has been a referee for 18+ scientific journals and 10+technical conferences, and a Program Committee Member for a number of conferences.

Dr. Hua received her Ph.D. degree in Optical Engineering from the Beijing Institute of Technology in China in 1999. Prior to joining the UA faculty in 2003, Dr. Hua was an Assistant Professor with the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 2003, was a Beckman Research Fellow at the Beckman Institute of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign between 1999 and 2002, and was a post-doc at the University of Central Florida in 1999.