Dirk has come a long way to Lafayette. Born in Germany, he holds a degree in Computer Science and worked for over a decade as a researcher in computer graphics and virtual reality at a private research institute. From there he went to Iowa State University in 2003 to start his academic career as an Assistant Professor in Computer Science, associated with the Virtual Reality Applications Center. In 2006 he followed Dr. Carolina Cruz, LITE's Chief Scientist and Executive Director, to Lafayette in order to help start up LITE and make it into the great place it is today.

Currently, he holds an assistant professor position at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in the Center for Advanced Computer Studies (CACS). His research is in innovative uses of interactive 3-D graphics technologies and he teaches software engineering and game development (which is a big business and a very serious topic nowadays). He is the project leader of the open source scenegraph system OpenSG, which powers many of the impressive projects at LITE on the graphics side.

In addition to being a LITE research fellow running many projects ranging from virtual reality welder training to usability analysis for Autostereoscopic Displays, due to his more than 20 years of 3-D graphics and software development experience, he is also one of the go-to guys for the LITE students and staff when things get complicated, which he enjoys very much.

Even though he's only been to Lafayette for a short time, he's already in Phase II of the “Lafayette Sickness” (trying to get rid of the more than 20 pounds gained after deciding not to leave). Success on that front is set back in regular intervals by the excessively good food in general and specifically, the sushi supply the city has to offer.

When his inner geek comes out, he likes to collect t-shirts and comics (much to the chagrin of his wife). He owns several hundred of both of these and is always happy to discuss the finer points of either.