Brian Schowengerdt is a senior research scientist in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Washington, the chair of the Display Systems committee at the Society for Information Display, and associate editor at the Journal of the SID. Schowengerdt received his Bachelor's degree (summa cum laude) in 1997 from the University of California, Davis, with a triple major in psychology, philosophy, and German. He received his Ph.D. (University of California, Davis) in psychology, with an emphasis in cognition and perception, in 2004. Since 2001, he has been working in the Human Interface Technology Laboratory at the University of Washington, where he conducted a portion of his doctoral research and studied display system design and optical engineering.

His main research interest is in using our knowledge about the functioning of the human visual system and perception to develop displays that are more natural, realistic, and comfortable to use. His work involves 3D displays, retinal scanned light displays, autostereoscopic displays, interaction with displays, adaptive displays, human factors, and human vision.