School of Informatics
Professor Rae Earnshaw, BSc PhD FBCS FInstP FRSA CEng CPhys CITPRae Earnshaw is Professor of Electronic Imaging and Media Communications at the University of Bradford, UK. He has been a Visiting Professor at Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA, Northwestern Polytechnical University, China, George Washington University, Washington DC, USA, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. He was a Director of the NATO Advanced Study Institutes on computer graphics and CAD in the UK in 1985 and in Italy in 1987. He is a member of ACM, IEEE, CGS, Eurographics, and a Fellow of the British Computer Society. He has been an Expert Adviser to the European Commission, a Reviewer of Framework proposals, and an Evaluator of Long Term Research projects. Prof. Earnshaw has authored and edited 34 books on computer graphics, visualization, multimedia, design, and virtual reality, and published 140 papers in these areas. He is a member of the Editorial Boards of The Visual Computer, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, the Journal of Visualization and Computer Animation, Managing Editor of Virtual Reality: Research, Development and Applications, and Vice-President of the Computer Graphics Society. He was also a Director of Advance Visual Communications Plc.
A selection of Professor Earnshaw's published books is available here
A selection of Professor Earnshaw's recent publications is available here A visualisation Time Line is available here Professor Earnshaw was Dean of the School of Informatics for 8 years. He was Pro Vice-Chancellor for 5 years since 2004. In the former role he was responsible for the management and development of the academic business of the School in the areas of teaching, research, knowledge transfer, and widening access. The School is interdisciplinary and brings together a number of areas including computing, IT, web, imaging, video, graphics, digital media, broadcasting, network-based media, computer animation, virtual reality, art, and design. He increased the number of students (undergraduate and post-graduate), the academic and support staffing levels of the School, the number of courses, the number of research grants, the knowledge transfer activities (the latter via an Informatics Innovation Unit http://www.inf.brad.ac.uk/kt/ ), and the number of internal and external collaborations. In his role as Pro Vice-Chancellor, he championed a broad range of linked projects which, in the first instance, will further develop the University’s electronic information and communications capability. Success in this field is critical to delivery of the aims of the university’s Corporate Strategic Plan, and ensure an enhanced student experience through the introduction of more flexible learning opportunities, better communications and more electronic service delivery, particularly for students and staff. There are three principal components to the University’s E-strategy –
Further information is at http://www.brad.ac.uk/corporateplan/e-strategy/ Background of Professor EarnshawProfessor Earnshaw has a background in computer science, computer graphics, visualization, multimedia, and digital media. He obtained his PhD at the University of Leeds in 1975 in computer graphics - the first thesis in this area in the University! At the University of Leeds he set up the Visualization Group in 1990, an inter-disciplinary activity involving about 100 faculty members and researchers. The objective was to develop state of the art visualization facilities for teaching and research based upon high powered workstations and supercomputers. From 1992 he was a founder member of the Multimedia Group at the University of Leeds that reported directly to the Pro Vice-Chancellor (Academic) and which was responsible for University-wide developments and initiatives in the area of multimedia. A grant of £456K was obtained in 1992 for a 3-year development programme to support teaching and learning through technology. He was involved with a number of major European Commission projects including VISINET ($2 Million funding) which investigated the use of 3D visualization across European ATM networks. This enabled groups of designers in different European countries to interact and share the same design data. This enabled collaborative work to take place over the network and avoids the need to travel - a time consuming and expensive process, particularly at European airline tariffs! A further project, MAID ($4.8 million), investigated the use of multimedia information to support the design process over the network. VISTA - Virtual Interactive Studio Television Applications using Networked Graphical Supercomputers ($3.6 million) - produced a generic and extensible telematics platform that supported the execution of scenarios in the domain of real-time interactive television, which can be regarded as the realisation of a Virtual Interactive Studio (VIS). A VIS offers the capabilities of mixing real and synthetic objects and characters in any combination - depending on the circumstances - controlled remotely by TV viewers. VPARK ($1 million) created a Virtual Amusement Park as an integration of several applications based on Distributed Virtual Environments. Research InterestsProfessor Earnshaw's research interests include:
His current research interests centre on mixed reality and technology platforms for cultural and arts creative expression. This utilises the tools and techniques from virtual reality and augmented reality, supplemented by video and projection technologies, and tangible and ubiquitous sensors or interaction devices. The latter will enable the creative process to be accomplished in a more natural and intuitive manner than current interfaces allow. The objective is to develop generic platforms and tools for facilitating creative expression, accessing artistic and cultural material, and developing new forms of communication and interaction between humans and media spaces. Applications include creative work in media production, exploitation of cultural assets, new kinds of contemporary design, facilitating arts and performance, and developing new kinds of museums. The latter is concerned with converting museums from passive repositories of collections and artefacts to dynamic and interactive centres of activity and debate. It thus sees archives and information as not just content, but also as medium – capable of reinvention, reinterpretation, and recommunication. It is envisaged that new forms of content, new kinds of content creation, and new types of application will follow from this work. It has implications for content creation, human/computer interaction, display techniques, and also the next generation of educational and learning environments which can be tuned to human needs and requirements. One partner in this work is the National Media Museum, a brand-leading Museum in Bradford. A £16 million upgrade in 1999 has positioned the Museum to lead the next generation, with interactive digital media galleries, new display environments, and unique collections and digital archives. Further information on the Museum is at – Flerackers C., N. Chilton, R. A. Earnshaw, W. Lamotte, F. Van Reeth, "3D Virtual Community Building Applications in the PANIVE Archiecture", in "Digital Media: The Future", pp 268-280, Springer, 2000, ISBN 1-85233-246-8 Brown J. R., A. van Dam, R. A. Earnshaw, J. L. Encarnacao, R. A. Guedj, J. Preece, B. Shneiderman, J. A. Vince, "Special Report on Human-Centered Computing, Online Communities and Virtual Environments", ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics, Volume 33, Number 3, pp 42-62, August 1999. Earnshaw R. A., R. A. Guedj, A. Van Dam, J. A. Vince (Eds) "Frontiers of Human-Centered Computing, Online Communities and Virtual Environments", Springer Verlag, pp 482, ISBN 1-85233-238-7, February 2001 (Jointly sponsored by NSF and the EU) Earnshaw R. A. and J. A. Vince "Digital Content Creation", Springer Verlag, pp 354, ISBN 1-85233-379-0, April 2001. Earnshaw R. A. and J. A. Vince (Eds) "Intelligent Agents for Mobile and Virtual Media", Springer Verlag, pp 195, ISBN 1-85233-5564, May 2002. Summary CV for Professor EarnshawProfessor R. A. Earnshaw Qualifications: BSc, PhD, FBCS, MIEEE, FInstP, FRSA, CEng, CPhys, CITP International AwardsGoodwill Envoy, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, awarded October 1991 Previous Positions
He was appointed Professor of Electronic Imaging and Media Communications at the University of Bradford in 1995. He has been Expert Adviser to the European Commission, a Reviewer of Framework proposals, an Evaluator of EU projects, and was involved with the EU Multimedia Pilot. He has been a College member of the EPSRC IT and Computer Science Panel Professor Earnshaw has authored and edited 34 books on graphics algorithms, computer graphics, visualization, multimedia and virtual reality, and published 140 papers in these areas. Membership of Editorial Boards and National and International Committees
Leadership and Management
Professor Earnshaw has been a QAA Institutional Auditor from 2002, a QAA Foundation Degree Reviewer since 2003, and a QAA Subject Reviewer in Computer Science from 2001. He has been involved with many audits and academic reviews since 2002, including overseas audits of the Universities in Jordan in 2001 and 2003, and a number of Universities in the Middle East on behalf of the United Nations in 2002.
He attended the Leadership Foundation’s Top Management Course, TMP8, 2005-06 August 2007 |