Tushar M Athawale

Bio

Tushar Athawale is a Computer Scientist in the Visualization Group (led by Dr. David Pugmire) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). He is a Joint Faculty Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK). He earned his M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from the University of Florida in May 2014 and May 2015, respectively (advisor: Prof. Alireza Entezari).  He specializes in uncertainty visualization for efficient and trustworthy scientific data discovery, with additional research interests in topological data analysis, large-scale visualization, and high-performance computing. 

Dr. Athawale is a recipient of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Early Career Research Award (2025) from the DOE's Office of Science (SC), Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR). He currently serves as an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics journal and as a Program Chair for IEEE VIS 2026 conference, the premier and largest conference in the data visualization field. 

Prior to joining ORNL, Dr. Athawale was a postdoctoral fellow at the Scientific Computing and Imaging (SCI) Institute at the University of Utah (advisor: Prof. Chris R. Johnson). He was previously a full-time employee at MathWorks, the developer of the MATLAB computing software, before joining SCI.

Personal webpage: http://tusharathawale.info/home/

Link to Google scholar page

Professional Experience

• Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN                                                     Nov 2021 - Present
  - Computer Scientist in visualization group. Research in uncertainty visualization and high performance computing for analysis of large-scale scientific data.
  - Joint Faculty Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Aug 2023-Present 
   
• SCI Institute, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT                                                            Oct 2016 - Oct 2021
  - Postdoctoral Fellow advised by Distinguished Prof. Dr. Chris R. Johnson. Research in statistical uncertainty quantification and visualization for scientific data with applications ranging from biomedical imaging to large-scale simulations. 
  - Co-Instructor for "Scientific Visualization" class in Spring 2018 and Spring 2019.
  - Co-Instructor for "Decomposition-Based Techniques in Data Analysis" class in Spring 2017. 
  - Seminar Leader for visualization research seminars in two semesters.
   
• MathWorks, Inc., Natick, MA                                                                                                July 2015 - Oct 2016
  - Application Support Engineer in Engineering Development Group (EDG). Technical support for MATLAB software users, lead contributor to software development of the in-built MATLAB function “IMROTATE3” for rotation of 3D volumes, interviewer for EDG applicants.
   
• University of Florida, Gainesville, FL                                                                                 May 2011 - May 2015
  - Research Assistant advised by Prof. Dr. Alireza Entezari in the Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE). Research in uncertainty quantification of isosurface visualizations for reliable data representation and analysis.
  - Teaching Assistant for the graduate- and undergraduate-level courses on Computer Graphics, Advanced Data Structures, and Programming Fundamentals.
   
• Nvidia Corporation, Pune, India                                                                                        Aug 2009 - May 2010
  - Software Engineering Intern. Study of the screen space ambient occlusion (SSAO) algorithm and embedding of game-specific SSAO profiles into the Nvidia graphics drivers.

Awards

• U.S. DOE Early Career Award (2025) for the proposal "VisTrust: Probabilistic Visualization of Univariate and Multivariate Scalar Data for Trusted Scientific Analysis and Discovery".
• Best Paper Award at 2025 IEEE Uncertainty Visualization Workshop for the paper "Efficient Probabilistic Visualization of Local Divergence of 2D Vector Fields with Independent Gaussian Uncertainty".
• 2024 Special Award from ORNL's Computational Science and Mathematics Division (CSMD) in recognition of two IEEE TVCG journal papers "A Comparative Study of Perceptual Sensitivity of Topological Visualizations to Feature Variations" and "Uncertainty Visualization of Critical Points of 2D Scalar Fields for Parametric and Nonparametric Probabilistic Models".
• Best Poster Award at the ORNL Software and Data Expo (OSDX) 2024 for the poster "Developing Efficient Multivariate Surface Uncertainty Visualization Algorithms Using VTK-m Software".
• Best Paper Honorable Mention at 2024 IEEE Uncertainty Visualization Workshop for the papers "Accelerated Depth Computation for Surface Boxplots with Deep Learning" and "FunM²C: A Filter for Uncertainty Visualization of Multivariate Data on Multi-Core Devices".

Education

• PhD in Computer Science,  University of Florida, Gainesville, FL                                    May 2010 - May 2015
  Dissertation: Quantification and visualization of spatial uncertainty in isosurfaces for parametric and nonparametric noise models [Abstract]
  Advisor: Prof. Alireza Entezari
  Graduated with highest distinction, GPA: 3.75/4.00
   
• MS in Computer Science, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL                                      May 2010 - May 2014
  Graduated with highest distinction, GPA: 3.75/4.00

  Relevant Coursework: Analysis of Algorithms, Advanced Data Structures, Computer Graphics, GPU Architecture and Programming, Machine Learning
   
• BE in Computer Engineering, University of Pune, Pune, India                                         May 2006 - May 2010
  Graduated with highest distinction, GPA: 8.81/10.00
   

Professional Service

• Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions of Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG) Journal (top-tier journal in data visualization)
• Program Chair for the 2025 and 2026 IEEE Visualization conferences (the premier and largest conference in the data visualization field)
• Chair of the "2025 IEEE Workshop on Uncertainty Visualization: Unraveling Relationships of Uncertainty, AI, and Decision-Making” to be held with the IEEE VIS 2025 conference
• Chair of the "2024 IEEE Workshop on Uncertainty Visualization: Applications, Techniques, Software, and Decision Frameworks” co-held with the IEEE VIS 2024 conference
• Organizer of the tutorial on “VTK-m - A ToolKit for Scientific Visualization on Many-Core Processors” held at the IEEE VIS 2022 tutorial track
• Member of a program committee for the EuroVis 2023, 2024, 2025 posters and 2025 short papers.
• Member of a program committee for the IEEE VIS 2020, 2021, 2022, 2024 short papers and 2025, 2026 full papers
• Member of a program committee for the IEEE TopoInVis 2022 workshop
• Reviewer for the IEEE VIS (2013, 2017-2025), EuroVis (2017-2019, 2021-2025), PacificVis (2023-2024), China Visualization (2020), and e-Science (2025) conferences
• Reviewer for journal papers: IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG), Computer Graphics Forum (CGF), Computers & Graphics (C&G),  Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering: Imaging & Visualizations (CMBBE), Computer Graphics & Applications (CG&A), Displays, Journal of Big Data, and Visual Computer
• Poster reviewer for undergraduate student posters presented at the Undergraduate Research Symposium in 2018 and 2019
• Student volunteer at the IEEE VIS 2013 conference

Professional Affiliations

Joint Faculty Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Aug 2023-Present 

Publications