Keynote — Bill Buxton

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Bill Buxton is a designer and a researcher concerned with human aspects of technology.  His work reflects a particular interest in the use of technology to support creative activities such as design, film making and music.  Buxton's research specialties include technologies, techniques and theories of input to computers,  technology mediated human-human collaboration, and ubiquitous computing.

In December 2005, he was appointed Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research. Prior to that, he was Principal of his own Toronto-based boutique design and consulting firm, Buxton Design, where his time was split between working  for clients, lecturing, and trying to finish a long-delayed book on sketching and interaction design. As well, he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, where he still works with graduate students. 

Buxton began his career in music, having done a Bachelor of Music degree at Queen's University. He then studied and taught at the Institute of Sonology, Utrecht, Holland, for two years. After completing an M.Sc. in Computer Science on Computer Music at the University of Toronto, he joined the faculty as a lecturer. Designing and using computer-based tools for music composition and performance is what led him into the area of human-computer interaction. From 1994 until December 2002, he was Chief Scientist of Alias|Wavefront, (now part of Autodesk) and from 1995, its parent company SGI Inc.  In the fall of 2004,  he was a part-time instructor in the Department of Industrial Design at the Ontario College of Art and Design.  In 2004/05 he was also Visiting Professor  at the Knowledge Media Design Institute (KMDI) at the University of Toronto. And from January through April 2005 and 2006, was a Visiting Researcher with the Computer-Mediated Living Group at Microsoft Research, Cambridge England. He currently splits his time between Redmond and Toronto.

In 1995, Buxton became the third recipient of the Canadian Human-Computer Communications Society Award for contributions to research in computer graphics and human-computer interaction, and was given the New Media Visionary of the Year Award at the 2000 Canadian New Media Awards. In 2002, he was elected to the CHI Academy, and Time Magazine named him one of the top 5 designers in Canada. In 2001, The Hollywood Reporter named him one of the 10 most influential innovators in Hollywood. In October, 2005, he and Gord Kurtenbach received the "Lasting Impact Award", from ACM UIST 2005, which was awarded for their 1991 paper, Issues in Combining Marking and Direct Manipulation Techniques. In June, 2007, he was named Doctor of Design, Honoris Causa, by the Ontario College of Art and Design.

He is on a number of academic advisory boards, including ICT&S, the Center for Advanced Studies and Research in Information and Communication Technologies & Society at the University of Salzburg, and the School of Image Arts at Ryerson University, Toronto. In 2000, he was designated Visiting Professor at Bournemouth University, with the National Centre for Computer Animation in the School of Media Arts & Communication. Buxton is a member of the Association of Computing Machinery and the Industrial Designers Society of America.

More details about the Dr. Buxton’s presentation will be provided shortly.

For more information about Bill Baxton visit http://www.billbuxton.com/.