Robert Spence | |
---|---|
Born | Hull, England | 11 July 1933
Occupation | Professor Emeritus |
Known for | work in the field of information visualization |
Academic background | |
Education | BSc, DIC, PhD, DSc, DrRCA |
Alma mater | University of London |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Information engineering |
Sub-discipline | Information visualization |
Institutions | Imperial College London |
Website | http://www.ee.ic.ac.uk/r.spence/ |
Robert (Bob) Spence (born 11 July 1933) is a British engineer and professor emeritus and senior research investigator at the Imperial College London,known for his work in the field of information visualization. [1] [2]
Born in Hull,England,Spence received his BSc in engineer in 1954 from the University of London,his Diploma of Imperial College from Imperial College,London in 1955,and in 1959 his PhD in engineering from the University of London. In 1983,he obtained a DSc in engineering from the University of London,and in 1997 a higher doctorate from the Royal College of Art. [3] He was awarded a second DSc from Imperial College London in 2018 for his work in Interactive Visual Artefacts. [4]
Spence has spent his academic career at the Department of Electrical Engineering of the Imperial College London,where he had started in 1958 as research assistant. In 1962,he became lecturer,in 1968 reader,and in 1984 professor of information engineering. Since 2000 he has been a professor emeritus and senior research investigator. He has been visiting professor at the University of Ljubljana,Yugoslavia;at the Nanjing Institute of Technology,China;at the University of Canterbury,New Zealand since 2002;and since 2003 at the Business School,University of Manchester. Since 2007 has also been an honorary professor at the University of Waikato,New Zealand. [3]
Notable contributions in the field of engineering include the generalized form of Tellegen's theorem and algorithms for improving the manufacturing yield of mass-produced circuits. In the field of human–computer interaction,Spence created the first focus+context technique called the Bifocal Display [5] which later led to fisheye views [6] used in information visualization. Spence's innovations include many novel tools for design. One example is the Influence Explorer [7] which proposed and demonstrated an interactive way for designers to select parameters and evaluate hundreds of variant designs in a matter of minutes.
Interactive computer graphics contributions from the late 1960s include ways for electronic circuit designers to sketch a circuit diagram on a computer display. Another key research direction was the topic of rapid serial visual presentation, [8] [9] in which a collection of images is presented sequentially and rapidly to help users find an image of interest.
Spence was elected fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 1976;fellow of the City and Guilds of London Institute in 1989;and fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 1990. In 1995,he was awarded Officier dans l’ Ordre des Palmes académiques bestowed by the French President,and in 1999 he received the Golden Jubilee Award from the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society. [3] In 2020,he was elected to the IEEE Visualization Academy. [10]
Articles,a selection:
Visualization or visualisation is any technique for creating images,diagrams,or animations to communicate a message. Visualization through visual imagery has been an effective way to communicate both abstract and concrete ideas since the dawn of humanity. from history include cave paintings,Egyptian hieroglyphs,Greek geometry,and Leonardo da Vinci's revolutionary methods of technical drawing for engineering and scientific purposes.
Ben Shneiderman is an American computer scientist,a Distinguished University Professor in the University of Maryland Department of Computer Science,which is part of the University of Maryland College of Computer,Mathematical,and Natural Sciences at the University of Maryland,College Park,and the founding director (1983-2000) of the University of Maryland Human-Computer Interaction Lab. He conducted fundamental research in the field of human–computer interaction,developing new ideas,methods,and tools such as the direct manipulation interface,and his eight rules of design.
Stuart K. Card is an American researcher and retired senior research fellow at Xerox PARC. He is considered to be one of the pioneers of applying human factors in human–computer interaction. With Jock D. Mackinlay,George G. Robertson and others he invented a number of information visualization techniques. He holds numerous patents in user interfaces and visual analysis.
George William Furnas is an American academic,Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Strategy at the School of Information of the University of Michigan,known for his work on semantic analysis and on human-system communication.
Patrick M. Hanrahan is an American computer graphics researcher,the Canon USA Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering in the Computer Graphics Laboratory at Stanford University. His research focuses on rendering algorithms,graphics processing units,as well as scientific illustration and visualization. He has received numerous awards,including the 2019 Turing Award.
Bernard D.H. Tellegen was a Dutch electrical engineer and inventor of the pentode and the gyrator. He is also known for a theorem in circuit theory,Tellegen's theorem.
Jock D. Mackinlay is an American information visualization expert and Vice President of Research and Design at Tableau Software. With Stuart Card,George G. Robertson and others he invented a number of information visualization techniques.
John Thomas Stasko III is a Regents Professor in the School of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech,where he joined the faculty in 1989. He also is one of the founding members of the Graphics,Visualization,and Usability (GVU) Center there. Stasko is best known for his extensive research in information visualization and visual analytics,including his earlier work in software visualization and algorithm animation.
Robert W. Brodersen was a professor emeritus of electrical engineering,and a founder of the Berkeley Wireless Research Center (BWRC) at the University of California,Berkeley.
David Albert Hodges (1937–2022) was an American electrical engineer,digital telephony pioneer,and professor of electrical engineering at the University of California,Berkeley.
Christopher Ray Johnson is an American computer scientist. He is a distinguished professor of computer science at the University of Utah,and founding director of the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute (SCI). His research interests are in the areas of scientific computing and scientific visualization.
Kenneth Carless Smith was a Canadian electrical engineer and academic. He was a Professor Emeritus,University of Toronto,cross-appointed to the departments of electrical and computer engineering,mechanical and industrial engineering,computer science,and the faculty of information science. Smith died on October 29,2023,at the age of 91.
Sheelagh Carpendale is a Canadian artist and computer scientist working in the field of information visualization and human-computer interaction.
Nicholas Robert Jennings is a British computer scientist and the current Vice-Chancellor and President of Loughborough University. He was previously the Vice-Provost for Research and Enterprise at Imperial College London,the UK's first Regius Professor of Computer Science,and the inaugural Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government on National Security. His research covers the areas of AI,autonomous systems,agent-based computing and cybersecurity.
Hanspeter Pfister is a Swiss computer scientist. He is the An Wang Professor of Computer Science at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and an affiliate faculty member of the Center for Brain Science at Harvard University. His research in visual computing lies at the intersection of scientific visualization,information visualization,computer graphics,and computer vision and spans a wide range of topics,including biomedical image analysis and visualization,image and video analysis,and visual analytics in data science.
Daniel Rueckert is Professor of Visual Information Processing and former Head of the Department of Computing at Imperial College London.
Daniel P. Siewiorek is an American computer engineer and computer scientist,currently the Buhl University Professor Emeritus of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.
The Department of Computing (DoC) is the computer science department at Imperial College London. The department has around 50 academic staff and 1000 students,with around 600 studying undergraduate courses,200 PhD students,and 200 MSc students. The department is predominantly based in the Huxley Building,180 Queen's Gate,which it shares with the Maths department,however also has space in the William Penney Laboratory and in the Aeronautics and Chemical Engineering Extension. The department ranks 7th in the Times Higher Education 2020 subject world rankings.
Björn Wolfgang Schuller is a scientist of electrical engineering,information technology and computer science as well as entrepreneur. He is professor of artificial intelligence at Imperial College London.,UK,and holds the chair of embedded intelligence for healthcare and wellbeing at the University of Augsburg in Germany. He was a university professor and holder of the chair of complex and intelligent systems at the University of Passau in Germany. He is also co-founder and managing director as well as the current chief scientific officer (CSO) of audEERING GmbH,Germany,as well as permanent visiting professor at the Harbin Institute of Technology in the People's Republic of China and associate of CISA at the University of Geneva in French-speaking Switzerland.
Niklas Elmqvist is a Swedish-American computer scientist. He is currently a professor in the Department of Computer Science at Aarhus University,and a Villium Investigator. He is the Director of the Center for Anytime Anywhere Analytics at Aarhus University,a research center on augmented reality and extended reality (AR/XR) for data visualization.