Born and spent my childhood in Lincoln, England, until the age of
nine, then Maeshafn in north Wales. Skip a few years now. Early interest
in computing and communications led to taking a BEng (hons) in computer science,
microelectronics and communications at Staffordshire University. This was interrupted
by a brief year long posting at International Computers Limited, mid range systems
development at Bracknell. During this time I became more interested in
communications, but human communications, aided by computing, leading to a move
to Essex University in 1985, where I studied for an MSc in Speech and Language
Processing, at the department of Linguistics. This led to the start of a PhD at
the University of Sheffield under Dr. Martin Cooke. Initially the subject
of my work was robust Artificial Speech Recognition, performed at the Speech and
Hearing Research Group. However, during the two and a half years at Sheffield
my work became more involved with the modelling of human speech perception, this
required the kinds of psychological experimentation that a computer science department
was not set up to support, therefore I took advantage of an open position at the
University of Geneva under Prof. Uli Frauenfelder. In Geneva I worked as a research
assistant examining syllable perception and segmentation, a study which had started
in Sheffield in English, and continued in French (much easier language for syllable
perception), and was to form the basis of my PhD thesis, which was eventually
finished in the summer of 2000. Studying a different aspect of communication,
still at the University of Geneva I began work at a new research group, the Geneva
Interaction Lab. At Gil I conduct research on the processes and motivations behind
collaboration, specifically, when mediated over computer interfaces. This has
led to the development of two research interests, the use of microworld environments
and Augmented Reality for the examination of collaboration. |