ELIZABETH BARON
She has been the driving force in the development and deployment of global, collaborative immersive paradigms for industrial design and engineering. She focuses on the use of disruptive technology solutions to solve workflow and visualization challenges with enterprise partners to apply creative and elegant immersive solutions that connect knowledge with experience for cross-functional teams.
Formerly, Elizabeth was a Technical Specialist in Immersive Realities at Ford Motor Company. She is the principal inventor of the Ford immersive Vehicle Environment (FiVE) process and technology, an immersive environment with high realism in experience, providing contextual data and real time global immersion for multiple disciplines across Ford. She then expanded FiVE to combine the physical and virtual worlds, creating location-based actionable immersive storytelling in Design Studios.
Elizabeth became the first Virtual Reality Technical Specialist at Ford, a position she asked to create so she could grow the technology within the Company. Elizabeth was awarded the highest individual technical award in Ford Motor Company, the Dr. Haren Gandhi Research and Innovation Award, honoring her career in immersive visualization and her technical leadership.
Elizabeth began her 30+ year career at Ford in 1988 working as a software developer for Ford’s product design software, later specializing in visualization and solid modeling software. She conducted research within Ford on the best use of VR tools for product design, development and engineering, and on accuracy of immersive assessments, and more. She has several patents related to immersive environments. Elizabeth and her work were highlighted by Ford in their nationwide ‘Drive One.’ TV ad campaign.
She received her BS in Industrial Technology and Computer Science from Eastern Michigan University. She is also a qualified Six Sigma Academy Black Belt. She is a member of ACM SIGGRAPH, serving on their Strategy Team, the Society of Automotive Engineers, planning ARVR-related symposiums, an XR Ignite Mentor, a member of the Ford Retired Engineering Executives (FREE), and adjunct lecturer at Kansas University Center for Design Research, a board member of Camp Talahi Retreat and Nature Center, and an Elder at Bethel United Church of Christ.