Visual thinking/Visual Computing
Speaker Bios

last updated January 20, 2005

Jeff Beall

Jeff Beall received his B.A. and Sc.M. in Computer Science from Brown University in 1996 and 1998, respectively. He worked in the Advanced Media Products division of Silicon Graphics for two years, focusing on realtime HD video capture and playback. In 1999, he joined DreamWorks Animation as a Lighting Technical Director on Shrek. Jeff went on to become the Lead Technical Director for Shrek2 and is now in charge of the software architecture for the company's feature animation production pipeline.

Jaron Lanier

Jaron Lanier is a computer scientist, composer, visual artist, and author. He coined the term 'Virtual Reality' and in the early 1980s founded VPL Research, the first company to sell VR products. While at VPL, he co-developed the first implementations of virtual reality applications in surgical simulation, vehicle interior prototyping, and virtual sets for television production.
 
Until recently, Lanier served as the Lead Scientist of the National Tele-immersion Initiative, a coalition of research universities studying advanced applications for Internet 2. He is currently a visiting faculty member at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth, the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania, the Interactive Telecommunications Program of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University (where he is a visiting artist), and at the Columbia University Computer Science Department.
 
Lanier is well known as both an author and speaker. The Encyclopedia Britannica includes him in its list of history's 300 or so greatest inventors.

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Bill Seaman

Bill Seaman received a P.D. from CAiiA (The Centre for Advanced Inquiry In The Interactive Arts), University of Wales, Newport, 1999. He holds a Master of Science in Visual Studies degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1985. His work explores text, image and/or sound relationships through technological installation, virtual reality, linear video, computer controlled laserdisc and other computer-based media, photography, and studio based audio compositions. He is self-taught as a composer and musician.
 
His works have been in numerous international festivals and Museum shows. He has been awarded the Ars Electronica prize in Interactive Art (1992 &1995), Linz, Austria; the International Video Art Prize, ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany; the Bonn Videonale prize; First Prize, Berlin Film / Video Festival for Multimedia (1995); and the Awards in the Visual Arts Prize.
 
Seaman is the Head of the new Digital Media Program at Rhode Island School of Design, Graduate Studies. He also continues his research at UCLA, collaborating with Ingrid Verbauwhede in EE, where he is exploring issues related to the continuum between physical and virtual/media space in the Poly-sensing Environment.

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James Faure Walker

Faure Walker studied painting at St Martins (1966-70) and aesthetics at the Royal College of Art (1970-72). Since 1988 he has been integrating computer graphics into his painting. He has exhibited in Holland, Germany, Austria, Spain, the USA, Japan, Russia and in numerous computer art festivals. In 1998 he won the 'Golden Plotter' prize in Germany.
 
Faure Walker was a founder of Artscribe magazine in 1976 and editor for eight years. His writings have also appeared in Wired, Studio International, Modern Painters, Mute, Computer Generated Imaging, Art Review, and in catalogues for the Tate, Barbican, SIGGRPH, and Computerkunst. He is Senior Research Fellow in Fine Art at Kingston University; in 2002 he won a major Arts and Humanities Research Board fellowship for research into painting and the digital studio. He is currently completing a book on digital painting.

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David Laidlaw

Laidlaw's research centers around applications in other scientific disciplines of visualization, computational modeling, computer graphics, and computer science. Particular interests include visualization of multivalued multidimensional imaging data, comparisons of virtual and non-virtual environments for scientific tasks, and applications of art and perception to visualization. He earned his Computer Science PhD from Caltech while working in the graphics group there. Laidlaw's post-doctoral work, also at Caltech, was in the Fraser lab in the Beckman Institute (a part of the Biology division ). He runs the Visualization Research Lab (VRL) here at Brown.

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James Joaquin

James is a hands-on leader with over 15 years of experience in building and developing consumer technology companies. As a Macintosh programmer in the early 1980's, he co-founded Clearview Software while still a computer science student at Brown University. He sold the applications company to Apple's Claris division and later spent six years with Apple in engineering, product marketing and business development management roles.
 
James' background includes two years as a partner handling client acquisition for ActiveSite, an Internet consulting firm that counseled firms like Netscape, Microsoft and Bank of America. James then co-founded and headed business development for When.com, an Internet calendar and events service that he sold to AOL before co-founding Ofoto in the summer of 1999. As CEO, James grew Ofoto into the leading online photo service and led the team through the successful sale to the Eastman Kodak Company.

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Phil Davis

Prof. Davis was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, USA in 1923. He received both of his undergraduate and doctoral degrees from Harvard in the field of pure mathematics. He was Chief, Numerical Analysis, National Bureau of Standards, Washington, D.C., for five years. He joined the faculty of Applied Mathematics at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, in 1963 and is now Professor Emeritus.
 
His extensive work in numerical analysis and approximation theory include many research papers and the technical books Interpolation and Approximation (1963), Numerical Integration (with Philip Rabinowitz, 1967), The Schwarz Function (1974), Circulant Matrices (1979), No Way: The Nature of the Impossible (with David Park, 1988). He is currently working on a book entitled Mathematics and Common Sense.
 
Two books, The Mathematical Experience and Descartes' Dream, written jointly with Reuben Hersh of the University of New Mexico, explore certain questions in the philosophy of mathematics, and the role of mathematics in society. These two books have been translated into practically all major European and Oriental languages. The Mathematical Experience won an American Book Award for 1983.
 
In a lighter vein, Davis has written a number of books of satire: The Thread: a Mathematcial Yarn (1983), Thomas Gray: Philosopher Cat, (1988). Thomas Gray in Copenhagen, a sequel to the first Thomas Gray book, appeared in 1995. These have appeared in numerous foreign language editions.
 
He has delivered many "name" lectures. In 1991, he delivered the Hendrick lectures of the Mathematical Association of America. These lectures have been elaborated in a book entitled Spirals: From Theodorus to Chaos.

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