Bernd Hamann serves as Associate Vice Chancellor for Research at UC Davis, where he is also a full professor of computer science. As Associate Vice Chancellor for Research, he is involved mainly in efforts concerned with inherently multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary research: overseeing research units reporting to the Office or Research; handling appointments and performance evaluations of Academic Senate/Federation members and professional research staff appointed in research units reporting to the Office of Research; advising and working with faculty concerning proposals for new research units/programs or other faculty-initiated large-scale research efforts; and coordinating, jointly with the Vice Chancellor for Research and the Associate Deans for Research, the review of campus pre-proposals for Limited Submissions programs, i.e., programs where the university can submit only a limited number of proposals. In fiscal year 2010/11, considering all sources, the total amount of funds available to all research units reporting to the Office of Research was approximately $125M, and their combined expenditure amount was approximately $120M. Since 2008-09, UC Davis has received consistently over $600M extramural funding per year.

Bernd Hamann joined UC Davis in 1995. From 1997 to 2004, he was co-director of a UC Davis Organized Research Unit, the "Center for Image Processing and Integrated Computing" (CIPIC), now called "Institute for Data Analysis and Visualization" (IDAV). From 1991 to 1995, he was a faculty member in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Mississippi State University, where he was associated with the "NSF Engineering Research Center for Computational Field Simulation," now called "High Performance Computing Collaboratory (HPC2)."

Bernd Hamann served on the editorial board of the IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics from 1999 until 2003, and served as a papers co-chair and proceedings co-editor for the IEEE Visualization conferences in 1999 and 2000. He is the author, co-author, or co-editor of nearly 400 publications and has given invited presentations at premier conferences, universities and research laboratories worldwide. Bernd Hamann has been a UC Davis key participating investigator and co-leader of the "Human-centered Computing" thrust of the UC Berkeley-led "Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society" (CITRIS).

Bernd Hamann's main research and teaching interests are visualization, geometric modeling (computer-aided geometric design), computer graphics, and immersive environments. Visualization is concerned with the development of techniques that transform numerical data into meaningful, computer-generated images. Applications of visualization technology include the analysis of data generated in computational fluid dynamics (CFD), computational and molecular biology, medical/biomedical imaging, or complex physics and hydrodynamics simulations. Geometric modeling is primarily addressing the representation and manipulation of curves and surfaces, with primary applications in automotive, aircraft and general product design. Computer graphics focuses on methods for rendering highly realistic computer-generated images of complex three-dimensional objects and scenes. Immersive visualization is an emerging technology that provides engineers and scientists with a means for interacting with massive, complex data in three-dimensional environments, supporting stereoscopic rendering for virtual design and data exploration applications. Bernd Hamann's current research focuses on hierarchical representations and visualization methods for very large data sets.

Bernd Hamann was awarded a 1992 Research Initiation Award by Mississippi State University, a 1992 Research Initiation Award by the National Science Foundation, and a 1996 CAREER Award by the National Science Foundation. In 1995, he received a Hearin-Hess Distinguished Professorship in Engineering by the College of Engineering, Mississippi State University. Bernd Hamann was offered an endowed Tier-1 Canadian Research Chair (CRC) in 2001 and an endowed LexisNexis/Ohio Eminent Scholar professorship in 2005. In 2006, he was awarded a University of California Presidential Chair in Undergraduate Education to develop research experiences for undergraduate students, concerned with visualization technologies in different scientific application areas with a focus on geology and geophysics. The University of Nevada, Las Vegas, extended an offer for the position of Vice President for Research and Dean of the Graduate College to Bernd Hamann in 2007. In 2010, Bernd Hamann was a finalist for the position of Rector of the University of Leipzig, Germany.

In 2005, Bernd Hamann co-founded Stratovan Corporation, a company specializing in interactive data visualization software development, see www.stratovan.com.

Bernd Hamann received a B.S. in computer science, a B.S. in mathematics, and an M.S. in computer science from the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from Arizona State University in 1991. He is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), and the IEEE Technical Committee on Visualization and Graphics (TCVG).