BURDEA, Grigore C.

PERSONAL:

Born in Bucharest, Romania; naturalized U.S. citizen; children: Gregory P. Ethnicity: "Armenian." Education: Civil Engineering Institute of Bucharest, B.Eng., M.Eng., 1980; New York University, M.S., 1985, Ph.D., 1987. Politics: Republican. Religion: Christian.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Rutgers University, 96 Frelinghuysen Rd., Piscataway, NJ 08854. E-mail—burdea@caip.rutgers.edu.

CAREER:

New York University, New York, NY, assistant research scientist, 1985-87; Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ, assistant professor, 1988-93, associate professor, 1993-2002, professor, 2002—, and director of Human-Machine Interface Laboratory; consultant. Military service: Romanian Army Reserve, 1974-80; became first lieutenant.

MEMBER:

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (senior member), American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (fellow).

WRITINGS:

(With Philippe Coiffet) La realité virtuelle, Hermes (Paris, France), 1993, translation published as Virtual Reality Technology, Wiley InterScience (New York, NY), 1994, 2nd edition, 2003.

(With Russell H. Taylor, Stèphane Lavalee, and Ralph Mösges) Computer Integrated Surgery: Technology and Clinical Applications, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 1996.

Force and Touch Feedback for Virtual Reality, Wiley InterScience (New York, NY), 1996.

Guest editor, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 1998, Presence, 2005, and IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 2005. Member of publication board, Presence, 1998—.

SIDELIGHTS:

Grigore C. Burdea told CA: "My primary motivation for writing is the need to organize a body of knowledge in an area (virtual reality) that lacks sufficient journal publication outlets and that changes rapidly. The secondary motivation is to help inform specialists by writing a dedicated textbook in an area where textbooks are nonexistent.

"When I write I tend to organize a book in skeleton form, then I fill in the blocks. This way there is continuity and clarity of thought. I strive to write in an easily understood style (a challenge when writing for a technical audience). I tell myself that it is always more difficult to write in a style that everyone understands than in a style that only the author does. So far my readers (and instructors) have been happy with the results. I am adding content online for my recent book to help instructors prepare their courses."