UC Davis will partner with seven other universities in a new effort, sponsored by Intel Corporation, to make computer-generated images even more realistic. The Intel Science and Technology Center for Visual Computing is led by Stanford University and will be supported with $2.5 million a year in Intel funding for up to five years.

John Owens, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Davis, will be "theme leader" for graphics systems -- one of four themes that the center will work on.

The graphics systems theme will investigate computing at all scales, from small (a processor in every camera) to large (visual computing in the "cloud,") Owens said.

Cloud computing, where applications and services are provided through the Internet, and crowdsourcing, where large numbers of people each work on a small piece of a problem, will be special emphases of the center.

The center also will focus on personal computing, which is rapidly moving from desktop computers to mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets, often equipped with high resolution cameras. For example, entire cities could be digitized using crowd-sourced images posted online, and the images knitted together into realistic three-dimensional models.

Owens said that his laboratory will build the "plumbing" -- the hardware and especially the low-level software that will make advanced graphics possible.

"The opportunity now is to change the 'plumbing' so that we can do things we could not do before," he said.

The other members of the center are UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, the University of Washington, Cornell University, Princeton University and Harvard University.

"I'm honored to be part of this group," Owens said. He estimated that the funding would support two graduate students in his laboratory for three years. The center will also provide the opportunity for Intel researchers to work at participating university campuses.

Software developed in the center will be released publicly under an open source license.