Professor Cruz-Neira is a leader in immersive technology research, known for her essential contributions to the CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment as a graduate student at the University of Illinois, Chicago in the early 1990s. A member of the National Academy of Engineering, she enjoyed faculty positions and creating research centers at Iowa State University and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. She is now at the University of Central Florida, where she is the Agere Chair Professor in the Computer Science Department. Cruz-Neira is an editor and editorial board member for several academic journals.