The 3D Visualization Center (Viz Center) in the School of Energy Resources (SER) welcomed Cole James and Kyle Carncross to the creative team in August.
The Viz Center has traditionally supported collaborative multidisciplinary grants and external service-oriented contracts all over campus to enhance teaching, research, and entrepreneurial activity. Though it will retain that part of its mission, the Viz Center has recently increased its focus on the internal SER-led projects as well as external virtual reality (VR) technology training. As a result, the Viz Center is making concerted effort to invest in project management tools, large-scale data storage, and a change in version control platforms to better accommodate a team with more diverse skillsets and development environments.
James and Carncross will work in support of those expanding outreach and conceptual design needs for SER’s dedicated energy research.
“We are so pleased to have Cole and Kyle join the team at SER in a permanent capacity,” says Viz Center Program Manager Kyle Summerfield. “ As the Viz Center transitions to focus on the innovative energy research being conducted here at SER, it is important to have a strong, capable team that is familiar with the emerging technology at the heart of our work. Both Kyle and Cole have the expertise to meet those challenges and contribute to the overall mission of SER, and are already contributing substantially to ongoing projects.”
A native of Casper, James graduated from the University of Wyoming (UW) in spring of 2023 with degrees in Business Management and Visual Communication Design. Throughout his undergraduate education, Cole worked in the 3D Viz Center for two years in the Technology Associate Program (TAP) where he cultivated his environmental modeling skills and excelled at motion capture and 3D animation technology.
In his new role as an Asset Developer, James will employ that expertise, along with his background in business and communication, to lead 3D asset creation in support of SER’s research grants.
“Being at SER is an incredible position and exactly where I want to be,” says James. “It is providing me with the opportunities to do really cool things and be creative in a really impactful way. I am so grateful for the experience that I gained in the internship program, and I am excited to dive right in and help bring SER’s research to Wyoming communities in a visual way.”
Originally from Broomfield, Colo., Carncross has accumulated nearly a decade of programming learning and practice in both academic and personal environments. He has worked at UW in various capacities for the past four years, most recently with Dining Services.
His new position at SER as a Software Developer is the result of a seven-month internship with the Viz Center in which he assisted in streamlining and creating some of the asset development pipelines. To date, he has worked to create an input abstraction layer for Unity – a development environment utilized in the Viz Center — allowing for easy portability between platforms without any internal code changes. He has also been tasked with exploring alternative development platforms to identify ideal use cases for tools currently outside the Viz Center’s established workflows.
“I’ve always been very interested in computer science and software development so this is an exciting opportunity for me,” says Carncross. “We use a lot of sophisticated software tools in the Viz Center and I will be working on the back end to streamline different controls into a single application. This will enable the software to be a lot more user friendly and allow different programs to function with any sort of controller.”
Summerfield notes that hiring James and Carncross exemplifies the strength of the TAP program by rounding out the development team with both front end and back end functionality.
“We are especially pleased that the TAP program has proved to be an avenue for retaining talent in the Viz Center,” he adds. “We have students come through our program from all sorts of different backgrounds; this really shows the versatility of the program and is quite the success story. While the duties and responsibilities will increase dramatically for Kyle and Cole in their new roles, the learning curve is substantially less as we are able to grow their experience and familiarity with the technologies in the Viz Center.”