Core Faculty
Dr. Mehdi Setareh is the director of the CAVM. He is a professor and member of the faculty of the School of Architecture and Design at Virginia Tech. He received his PhD in Structural Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 1990. Dr. Setareh has over twenty five years of experience in the use of computer technology in research and education as related to the analysis and design of various structures. His research on different aspects of architectural structures has been sponsored by various federal and state agencies in addition to professional organization and private industries. He has numerous publications in technical journals and conference proceedings. His structural Technology Seminars have provided continuing education to hundreds of practicing architects throughout the U.S. Dr. Setareh is a licensed professional engineer in states of Virginia and Michigan. He is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, American Institute of Steel Construction, Society of Experimental Mechanics, and American Society of Engineering Education.
Dr. Nicholas F. Polys is the co-director of the CAVM. He is also the director of Visual Computing with Virginia Tech Research Computing Group and Affiliate Research Professor in the Department of Computer Science. He has developed interactive 3D graphic content and systems for over 12 years. His research interests lie at the center of graphics and Human Computer Interaction: the intersection of visualization, virtual environments, and perception. After his undergraduate research in Cognitive Science at Vassar College (1996), he jumped into the networked information space of the WWW developing audio, visual, and 3D assets and software. His doctoral work at Virginia Tech (2006) examined perceptual cues and layout behaviors for Information-Rich Virtual Environments for desktop to immersive platforms. He is a member of ACM, IEEE Computer Society, and the Web3D Consortium. He is a co-author of the international standard (ISO) Extensible 3D (X3D), an elected director of the Web3D Consortium, and chair of the Web3D User Interface Working Group.
Dr. Brett D. Jones is an Associate Professor in the Educational Psychology program within the School of Education at Virginia Tech. He received his Bachelor’s of Architectural Engineering degree, with an emphasis in structural engineering, from The Pennsylvania State University in 1992. Subsequently, he worked as a consulting engineer at an architectural engineering firm for three years. He obtained his M.A. (1997) and Ph.D. (1999) in Educational Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has held faculty positions as an educational psychologist at Duke University, the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, and Virginia Tech. He received the North Carolina Association for Research in Education’s Distinguished Paper Award (2000) and the university-wide Undergraduate Teaching Award at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg (2003-2004). His current research focuses on applying motivation and cognitive theories to instruction (www.MotivatingStudents.info). His work at the CAVM involves researching the effects of computer-assisted visualization systems on students’ motivation and learning.