Aaron Lefohn ![](/sites/default/files/person/IMG_5973_cropped_2.jpg) Aaron Lefohn leads the Real-Time Rendering Research team at NVIDIA. Aaron has led real-time rendering and graphics programming model research teams for over a decade and has productized many research ideas into games, film rendering, GPU hardware, and GPU APIs. His teams' inventions have played key roles in bringing ray tracing to real-time graphics, combining AI and computer graphics, and pioneering real-time AI computer graphics. Some of the NVIDIA products derived from Aaron's teams' inventions include DLSS, RTX Direct Illumination (RTXDI), NVIDIA's Real-Time Denoisers (NRD), the OptiX Deep Learning Denoiser, and more. The teams' current focus areas include real-time physically-based light transport, AI computer graphics, image metrics, and graphics systems. In the distant past, Aaron worked in rendering R&D at Pixar Animation Studios, creating interactive rendering tools for film artists, was part of a graphics startup called Neoptica creating rendering software and programming models for Sony PlayStation 3, and also led real-time rendering research at Intel. Aaron received his Ph.D. in computer science from UC Davis, his M.S. in computer science from the University of Utah, and also an M.S. in theoretical chemistry. Research Area(s) [Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning ](/research-area/machine-learning-artificial-intelligence) [Programming Languages, Systems and Tools](/research-area/programming-languages-systems) [Real-Time Rendering](/research-area/real-time-rendering) Main Field of Interest [Computer Graphics](/research-area/computer-graphics) ### Publications ### 2023 [Random-Access Neural Compression of Material Textures](/index.php/publication/2023-08_random-access-neural-compression-material-textures) Karthik Vaidyanathan, Marco Salvi, [Bart Wronski](/index.php/person/bart-wronski), [Tomas Akenine-Möller](/index.php/person/tomas-akenine-moller), [Pontus Ebelin](/index.php/person/pontus-ebelin), [Aaron Lefohn](/index.php/person/aaron-lefohn) [SIGGRAPH 2023](https://s2023.siggraph.org/) SIGGRAPH 2023 Technical Papers Awards: Honorable Mention [Real-Time Neural Appearance Models](/index.php/publication/2023-05_real-time-neural-appearance-models) [Tizian Zeltner](/index.php/person/tizian-zeltner), [Fabrice Rousselle](/index.php/person/fabrice-rousselle), [Andrea Weidlich](/index.php/person/andrea-weidlich), [Petrik Clarberg](/index.php/person/petrik-clarberg), [Jan Novák](/index.php/person/jan-novak), [Benedikt Bitterli](/index.php/person/benedikt-bitterli), Alex Evans, [Tomáš Davidovič](/index.php/person/tomas-davidovic), [Simon Kallweit](/index.php/person/simon-kallweit), [Aaron Lefohn](/index.php/person/aaron-lefohn) [TOG (Presented at SIGGRAPH 2024)](https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3659577) ### 2020 [Spatiotemporal reservoir resampling for real-time ray tracing with dynamic direct lighting](/publication/2020-07_spatiotemporal-reservoir-resampling-real-time-ray-tracing-dynamic-direct) Benedikt Bitterli, [Chris Wyman](/person/chris-wyman), [Matt Pharr](/person/matt-pharr), Peter Shirley, [Aaron Lefohn](/person/aaron-lefohn), Wojciech Jarosz ACM Transactions on Graphics (SIGGRAPH 2020) [Neural Temporal Adaptive Sampling and Denoising](/publication/2020-05_neural-temporal-adaptive-sampling-and-denoising) [Jon Hasselgren](/person/jon-hasselgren), [Jacob Munkberg](/person/jacob-munkberg), Marco Salvi, Anjul Patney, [Aaron Lefohn](/person/aaron-lefohn) [Computer Graphics Forum (Proceedings of Eurographics 2020) ](https://diglib.eg.org/handle/10.1111/cgf13919) ### 2018 [Correlation-Aware Semi-Analytic Visibility for Antialiased Rendering](/publication/2018-08_correlation-aware-semi-analytic-visibility-antialiased-rendering) [Cyril Crassin](/person/cyril-crassin), [Chris Wyman](/person/chris-wyman), Morgan McGuire, [Aaron Lefohn](/person/aaron-lefohn) [HPG ’18: High-Performance Graphics](http://www.highperformancegraphics.org/2018/) ### 2017 [Interactive Stable Ray Tracing](/publication/2017-07_interactive-stable-ray-tracing) Alessandro Dal Corso, Marco Salvi, [Craig Kolb](/person/craig-kolb), Jeppe Revall Frisvad, [Aaron Lefohn](/person/aaron-lefohn), [David Luebke](/person/david-luebke) [Proceedings of High Performance Graphics (HPG '17)](https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3105769) [Spatiotemporal Variance-Guided Filtering: Real-Time Reconstruction for Path-Traced Global Illumination](/publication/2017-07_spatiotemporal-variance-guided-filtering-real-time-reconstruction-path-traced) Christoph Schied, Anton Kaplanyan, [Chris Wyman](/person/chris-wyman), Anjul Patney, Chakravarty R. Alla Chaitanya, John Burgess, Shiqiu Liu, Carsten Dachsbacher, [Aaron Lefohn](/person/aaron-lefohn), Marco Salvi Proceedings of High Performance Graphics 2017 [Interactive Reconstruction of Monte Carlo Image Sequences using a Recurrent Denoising Autoencoder](/index.php/publication/2017-07_interactive-reconstruction-monte-carlo-image-sequences-using-recurrent) Chakravarty R. Alla Chaitanya, Anton Kaplanyan, Christoph Schied, Marco Salvi, [Aaron Lefohn](/index.php/person/aaron-lefohn), Derek Nowrouzezahrai, [Timo Aila](/index.php/person/timo-aila) [SIGGRAPH 2017](http://s2017.siggraph.org/) ### 2016 [Towards Foveated Rendering for Gaze-Tracked Virtual Reality](/publication/2016-12_towards-foveated-rendering-gaze-tracked-virtual-reality) Anjul Patney, Marco Salvi, [Joohwan Kim](/person/joohwan-kim), Anton Kaplanyan, [Chris Wyman](/person/chris-wyman), Nir Benty, [David Luebke](/person/david-luebke), [Aaron Lefohn](/person/aaron-lefohn) ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia) [Perceptually-Based Foveated Virtual Reality](/index.php/publication/2016-07_perceptually-based-foveated-virtual-reality) Anjul Patney, [Joohwan Kim](/index.php/person/joohwan-kim), Marco Salvi, Anton Kaplanyan, [Chris Wyman](/index.php/person/chris-wyman), Nir Benty, [Aaron Lefohn](/index.php/person/aaron-lefohn), [David Luebke](/index.php/person/david-luebke) [SIGGRAPH Emerging Technologies](http://s2016.siggraph.org/content/emerging-technologies) [Filtering Distributions of Normals for Shading Antialiasing](/publication/2016-06_filtering-distributions-normals-shading-antialiasing) Anton Kaplanyan, Stephen Hill, Anjul Patney, [Aaron Lefohn](/person/aaron-lefohn) [High-Performance Graphics (best paper)](http://www.highperformancegraphics.org/2016/) ### 2015 [Frustum-Traced Raster Shadows: Revisiting Irregular Z-Buffers](/index.php/publication/2015-02_frustum-traced-raster-shadows-revisiting-irregular-z-buffers) [Chris Wyman](/index.php/person/chris-wyman), Rama Hoetzlein, [Aaron Lefohn](/index.php/person/aaron-lefohn) [Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games](http://dl.acm.org/event.cfm?id=RE299) [Aggregate G-Buffer Anti-Aliasing](/publication/2015-02_aggregate-g-buffer-anti-aliasing) [Cyril Crassin](/person/cyril-crassin), Morgan McGuire, Kayvon Fatahalian, [Aaron Lefohn](/person/aaron-lefohn) [Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games 2015 (I3D…](http://www.csee.umbc.edu/csee/research/vangogh/I3D2015/) [Real-Time Neural Appearance Models](/index.php/publication/_real-time-neural-appearance-models) [Tizian Zeltner](/index.php/person/tizian-zeltner), [Fabrice Rousselle](/index.php/person/fabrice-rousselle), [Andrea Weidlich](/index.php/person/andrea-weidlich), [Petrik Clarberg](/index.php/person/petrik-clarberg), [Jan Novák](/index.php/person/jan-novak), [Benedikt Bitterli](/index.php/person/benedikt-bitterli), Alex Evans, [Tomas Davidovic](/index.php/person/tomas-davidovic), [Simon Kallweit](/index.php/person/simon-kallweit), [Aaron Lefohn](/index.php/person/aaron-lefohn)