Eric Haines is an United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 software engineer

Software engineer

A software engineer is an engineer who applies the principles of software engineering to the design, development, testing, and evaluation of the software and systems that make computers or anything containing software, such as computer chips, work.- Overview :...

, expert in computer graphics

Computer graphics

Computer graphics are graphics created using computers and, more generally, the representation and manipulation of image data by a computer with help from specialized software and hardware....

, specifically in image rendering

Rendering (computer graphics)

Rendering is the process of generating an image from a model , by means of computer programs. A scene file contains objects in a strictly defined language or data structure; it would contain geometry, viewpoint, texture, lighting, and shading information as a description of the virtual scene...

. he is with Autodesk, Inc., lead software engineer

Software engineer

A software engineer is an engineer who applies the principles of software engineering to the design, development, testing, and evaluation of the software and systems that make computers or anything containing software, such as computer chips, work.- Overview :...

. He is a co-author of the book Real-Time Rendering.

Eric Haines earned M.S. in 1986 from Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

 (thesis: The Light Buffer: A Ray Tracer Shadow Testing Accelerator; an image created by software based on the thesis was used on the September 1986 cover of the IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications journal).

He authored chapters in the classical book An Introduction to Ray Tracing by Andrew Glassner

Andrew Glassner

Andrew S. Glassner is an American expert in computer graphics, well known in computer graphics community as the originator and editor of the Graphics Gems series and of An Introduction to Ray Tracing...

 (ed). He published a number articles in computer graphics, some of which are included in the Graphics Gems series.

Haines is on the editorial board of the Journal of Graphics Tools

Journal of Graphics Tools

The Journal of Graphics Tools, abbreviated jgt, is a peer-reviewed research journal that focuses on computer graphics. It has been published quarterly by A K Peters, Ltd. since 1996...

and is an editor of the online forum of experts in ray tracing, Ray Tracing News (1988-2007)