Werner Purgathofer is a full professor of computer science and head of the Institute
of Computer Graphics and Algorithms at the Vienna University of Technology, responsible for research and education in computer graphics. He received a Ph.D. in 1984 from TU Vienna. In 1981 and 1986 he received "best paper awards" at the Eurographics annual conferences. He has written a German language textbook on computer graphics and has organised the 1991 and 2006 Eurographics annual conferences in  Vienna. He is the scientific director of the VRVis Research Center (www.vrvis.at) in Vienna, which he founded in 2000. From 2001 until 2011 he was vice-chair of the Commission for Scientific Visualisation of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He served in the Executive Committee of Eurographics from 1988 until 2015, became a fellow of the association in 1997, and was its president from 2013 to 2014. In 2006 he received the Distinguished Career Award from Eurographics and the Gold medal in 2017. In 2010 he was awarded a Dr.h.c. from the Technical University of Iasi, and in 2017 a guest professor title from the Hebei University of Technology.