Bernard Frischer is a leading virtual archaeologist and the author of seven printed books, three e-books, and dozens of articles on virtual heritage, Classics, and the survival of the Classical world. He is the founding editor of Digital Applications to Archaeology and Cultural Heritage, the world's first peer-reviewed, online journal where scientists can publish interactive 3D models. Frischer received his B.A. in Classics from Wesleyan University (CT) in 1971 and his Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Heidelberg in 1975. He taught Classics at UCLA from 1976 to 2004. Since then he has been Professor of Art History and Classics at the University of Virginia, where he is also Director of the Virtual World Heritage Laboratory, whose mission is to apply 3D digital tools to simulating cultural heritage artifacts and sites as heuristic instruments of discovery. The lab’s major projects currently include creation of a virtual world of Hadrian’s Villa, the World Heritage Site near Tivoli, Italy; and using digital technology to scan and restore ancient sculpture.
Frischer has been a guest professor at the University of Pennsylvania (1993), the University of Bologna (1994), Beijing Normal University (2009) and held the post of Professor-in-Charge of the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome (2000-01). He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, a Fellow of the Michigan Society of Fellows, a fellow and trustee of the American Academy in Rome, and he has won research fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies (1981, 1996), the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (1997), and the Zukunftskolleg (Institute for the Future) of the University of Konstanz (2010-11).
From 1996 to 2003 Frischer directed the excavations of Horace's Villa sponsored by the American Academy in Rome, and from 1996 to 2004 he was founding director of the UCLA Cultural Virtual Reality Laboratory. The lab was one of the first in the world to use 3D computer modeling to reconstruct cultural heritage sites. Frischer has overseen many significant modeling projects, including "Rome Reborn," the virtual recreation of the entire city of ancient Rome within the Aurelian Walls. Rome Reborn was the featured project at SIGGRAPH 2008.
In 2005 Bernard Frischer was given the Pioneer Award of the International Society on Virtual Systems and Multimedia. In 2009, he was the recipient of the Tartessus Lifetime Achievement Prize from the Spanish Society of Virtual Archaeology