Steve Parker passed away due to complications from brain cancer on May 2. Steve was one of the inaugural graduate students who formed the SCI research group in 1994.
That year, he published his first paper on the SCIRun problem solving environment, which continues to have scientific impact 30 years later (https://www.sci.utah.edu/software/scirun.html). While writing his dissertation, Steve worked on a side research project on parallel ray tracing that would pave the way for a series of research innovations, the establishment of the Center for Interactive Ray-Tracing and Photo Realistic Visualization, and the start-up company Ray Scale. Steve defended his PhD in 1999 and soon after became our colleague as a SCI Institute Faculty member and an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Utah. In 2008, Steve joined NVIDIA as the Director for High Performance Computing and Computational Graphics and in 2014 became the Vice President for Professional Graphics.
Steve was a profound innovator, a remarkable student, and a wonderful colleague and friend. He was one of the smartest, nicest, and kindest person anyone could know. We will miss him greatly.
We offer our sincere condolences to Steve’s family and many friends.
You can find a list of Steve’s publications here: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=J7N6-AgAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
A link to Steve's obituary: https://www.larkinmortuary.com/obituary/view/steven-gregory-parker/