Rama Hoetzlein
Founder at California College of the Arts
Richmond, California, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolRama Hoetzlein is a founder, professor, and research-driven engineer with 11 years of professional experience building voxel rendering systems, interactive media, and digital design curricula. As Lead Architect of NVIDIA’s open-source GVDB Voxels SDK, he improved core voxelization, raycasting, and cross-platform stability—work that underpins high-performance sparse volume rendering for visualization and additive manufacturing. He now leads Quanta Sciences while teaching Interaction Design at California College of the Arts, blending hands-on GPU research with design-focused pedagogy. His academic background (PhD Media Arts & Technology, dual BFA/BA from Cornell) and early contributions to digital humanities and game design reflect a rare mix of art, systems-level graphics engineering, and human-centered research. Uncommonly, his career spans both deep R&D at industry leaders like NVIDIA and grassroots curriculum creation, making him adept at translating advanced graphics research into practical tools and classroom learning.
11 years of coding experience
18 years of employment as a software developer
BFA and BA, Fine Arts and Computer Science (dual-degree), BFA and BA, Fine Arts and Computer Science (dual-degree) at Cornell UniversityPh.D in Media Arts & Technology, Media Arts, Ph.D in Media Arts & Technology, Media Arts at UC Santa Barbara
Stackoverflow
11reputation
4kreached
1answer
0questions
Github Skills (13)
cuda10
gpu-programming10
raytracing10
c-language10
3d-graphics10
cprogramming-language10
opengl10
build-system9
cmake9
geometry6
voxel6
graphic6
3d6
Programming languages (5)
Github contributions (5)
NVIDIA/gvdb-voxels
May 2017 - Aug 2019
Sparse volume compute and rendering on NVIDIA GPUs
Role in this project:
Backend Developer
Backend DeveloperContributions:24 commits, 11 PRs, 49 pushes in 2 years 3 months
Contributions summary:Rama primarily focused on modifying and extending the GVDB library's core functionalities. Their contributions involved adding support for OpenGL camera integration, refining raycasting algorithms, fixing a major raytracing bug, and addressing build issues for various platforms, including Windows. The user also made several improvements to the GVDB's topology and voxelization processes. Overall, the work centered on improving the stability and functionality of the GVDB system.
cudanvidiagpusparsevolume
ramakarl/libmin
Oct 2023 - Mar 2025
Libmin: A minimal utility library for computer graphics
Contributions:1 PR, 152 pushes, 1 branch in 1 year 5 months
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