Bill Tomlinson
Position: Assistant Professor of Informatics and Drama
Email: wmt [at] uci.edu
Website: http://www.ics.uci.edu/~wmt/
What do you do on the project? I'm one of the lead researchers on the project. My responsibilities include overseeing the implementation of various aspects, helping to get the animation, integrating the system, and thinking about how to properly evaluate it to see whether or not it has educational value. I also oversee the production, programming, and demonstrations.
How long have you been with the group? I've been with UCI for two years and just started my third year. I've been the head of this particular project for the whole time, which we've been working on for about five to six months.
Why are you working on the project? VirtualRaft, my previous project, was an interesting new piece of technology of how things work that didn't really have a societal impact, so I'm working with an ecologist, Lynn Carpenter, to make a version [of VirtualRaft] to provide a learning experience in the topic of restoration ecology. [We hope] that this will be exhibited at a science museum like the Discovery Science Center.
What do you think is the overall goal of the project? The main goal of the project is to make an interactive museum exhibit to help kids learn about ecology and restoring it.
What was your favorite part of [or working on] the project? Working with all of the research group.
What are your career goals/interests? The thing I'm interested in is building and enabling technologies in creative and educational products. I think there're a lot of interesting things that come out of autonomous agents' research and human computer interaction research that can help put forward creative projects like films and video games. I think that interactive technology can be really useful for educational purposes and this project is really helping that push forward.
What are the other projects you've worked on? In reverse chronological order, we did the VirtualRaft project in 2004 and a project called AlphaWolf (which basically simulates the role of a wolf in a wolf pack). I worked on five or six other projects before that and did some work with interactive cinematography, animation films, and little independent films, as well as acting and directing.
Have you gotten any awards and/or publications? See my website at the Publications section.
Any other questions and/or answers would you like on your site? I'd just like to talk about what a great research group we have for this project-a lot of people are really passionate about what they do, and it's exciting to have the chance to work with them.
Last updated: October 18, 2005