The SCI Institute faculty, staff, and students were shocked and saddened to learn that our great friend and mentor Bill Lorensen passed away on December 12 from complications of colon cancer. Typically for Bill, he was optimistic and good humored to the end.

Bill was a visionary researcher who enthusiastically shared his technical gifts with everyone. He loved thinking and working on interesting problems in visualization and software and found true joy in collaborating with researchers at every level and in every area. Bill’s humor was infectious and he told a great story, especially over an after-work beer, another of Bill’s passions.

Bill was also an outstanding mentor, providing supportive advice and helpful ideas to students and faculty alike, including to many at SCI. Bill was a long time member and then Chair of the External Advisory Board of our NIH Center for Integrative Biomedical Computing (http://www.sci.utah.edu/cibc-about/eab.html). With his insights, motivation, and experience, he helped guide us through multiple successful Center renewals.

Most of all, Bill was our great friend. Over the past three decades of interacting with SCI Institute faculty, staff, and students, Bill truly became part of the SCI Institute team. We will miss him.

In honor of Bill’s scientific contributions, a memorial research fund has been created.


C. R. Johnson, T. Kapur, W. Schroeder,, T. Yoo. “Remembering Bill Lorensen: The Man, the Myth, and Marching Cubes,” In IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, Vol. 40, No. 2, pp. 112-118. March, 2020.