Work
Until recently, my professional life has revolved around academia, research, and consulting,
I'm currently Head of Immersive Technology and Spatial Computing Research at JPMorgan Chase. I'm on leave from my position as a Professor at Northeastern University, with appointments in the School of Art+Design in the College of Art, Media, and Design, and the Khoury College of Computer Sciences. I'm also an Adjunct Professor at Georgia Tech, in the School of Interactive Computing. From 2016 through 2020, I was a Principal Research Scientist working on Mixed Reality in Emerging Technologies at Mozilla. While at Mozilla, I became actively involved in the W3C's Immersive Web Community Group, where I still contribute.
My publications and research portfolio can be found elsewhere on this site, including direct links to all of my ACM publications in the ACM Digital Library. A list of classes I have taught is available here. A brief bio and professional pictures are available here.
My address at Georgia Tech is:
Georgia Tech, School of Interactive Computing
85 5th Street NW
Atlanta, GA, 30308
phone: (404) 894-5224
After getting degrees at the University of Waterloo (in Canada) and Columbia University (in New York City), I moved to Georgia Tech in Atlanta.
As a student, I worked as an intern at research labs, including the Waterloo Systems Research Lab, the Center for the New Oxford English Dictionary, Xerox PARC, and NYNEX Science and Technology’s Research Center. I was a graduate student at both the University of Waterloo (in the Computer Graphics Lab) and Columbia University (the Computer Graphics and User Interfaces Lab).
I was a faculty member at Georgia Tech since the beginning of 1999, where I created and ran the GVU Center’s Augmented Environments Lab. My research was primarily in the area of Augmented Reality, an approach to creating interactive computer media where content is directly integrated into a participant's experience of the world around them. My research has spanned a broad spectrum of application domains over the years, from military and industrial applications to art, entertainment, education, and games. I was an active member of the GVU Center, collaborating with colleagues throughout Georgia Tech. Since many of my collaborations are with faculty in the School of Literature, Media and Communication, I was also an adjunct professor there.
When I left Georgia Tech in 2022, the lab’s biggest recent project was the Argon AR Web Browser and the argon.js open-source framework for web-based augmented reality. This work led to my time at Mozilla and inspired how I approached the design of WebXR. In the past, I’ve co-directed the Augmented Reality Game Studio, the Georgia Tech Game Studio, the AR Facade apartment-scale AR drama, AR SecondLife, the Designer's AR Toolkit (DART), the Nerdherder AR game, as well as numerous smaller projects.
Over the past few years, I've become so concerned about the Climate Crisis that I'm hoping to use my expertise on XR to support distributed conferences, education, and meetings. The exciting side effect of this is that when we support people attending events remotely, we open them up to a wider range of attendees, increasing access by those who might not otherwise attend.
In general, I work with a broad range of technology as appropriate for the experiences we create, including handheld, head-worn, projection and auditory displays. Beyond entertainment applications, I have worked on industrial applications of augmented reality with researchers in the GTRI Food Processing Technology Division.
In my research, I have looked at both task-focused and experiential systems, and blended elements of augmented and virtual reality, ubiquitous computing, tangible media, and wearable computing. My research addresses various computing issues (including human-computer interaction, computer graphics, computer systems, and software engineering) and design issues (including new media design theory, and tools and theories of design for new media) encountered during the design and implementation of augmented environments.
I am involved with numerous conferences and workshops, and have been a Program Committee Chair for ISWC 2000 (International Symposium on Wearable Computing), ISMAR 2003 (International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality), and UIST 2003 (The ACM Symposium on User-Interface Software and Technology). I was the general chair for ISMAR 2012 and IEEE VR 2020.
I have served on the editorial boards of The International Journal of Human-Computer Studies and the journal Virtual Reality, and am currently on the editorial board of Frontiers in Virtual Reality. I was a guest editor (with Mark Livingston at NRL) of a “Mixed Reality” special issue of IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.
In 2009, I co-founded Aura Interactive, a design and consulting firm specializing in Augmented Reality entertainment. After Aura shut down in 2014, I founded The MacMynatt Group in 2015 to continue consulting on design, augmented reality, and related technologies. I have consulted for numerous companies, big and small, on design, gaming, business, and legal issues related to AR. I am especially interested in helping push augmented, mixed, and virtual reality from a niche technology to the mainstream and working with clients to ensure their applications and experiences make effective and compelling use of the technology.