Candidate Talk: Enhancing the P racticality and R eachability of Interactive Technology

As researchers, one of our common goals is to expand our reach and our capabilities as human beings through the development of new technologies and new ideas. Often we use immense resources to explore this new territory. However, an unfortunate side effect of this essential activity is that the number of individuals that can participate in this search becomes smaller and smaller as the resources become greater and greater. My primary motivation in research is to develop and demonstrate new techniques that substantially increase the practicality and reachability of technology. My work solves real world problems of applying research concepts by simplifying implementation and reducing system cost. This does two things: first, it enables more researchers to explore the domain advancing the state of research; second, it results in a more practical commercialization increasing distribution, adoption, and overall impact. In this talk, I will describe how I have successfully applied this philosophy in my research projects ranging from projector calibration, augmented reality, multi-touch interaction, immersive displays, animation, to biometric interaction.