Professor Daniel Vogel has received an Early Researcher Award from the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Science for his proposal to explore the potential for human-computer interaction in fully interactive physio-digital spaces.
The Early Researcher Awards Program recognizes promising recently appointed faculty by providing them with support to build a research team. Consisting of $140,000 from the Government of Ontario matched with $50,000 from the University of Waterloo, Vogel’s five-year $190,000 award will support one PhD and two master’s students.
The overarching goal of the research is to explore the potential for human-computer interaction of individual and multiple users using objects and surfaces as both input and output devices. Applications are manifold and range from the subtle, for example, using wallpaper in a room as a surface to display social media activity, to the more direct, perhaps superimposing the local weather forecast on bathroom tiles or allowing a person to adjust a room’s temperature by rotating a nearby coffee cup as though it were a thermostat.
This innovative research explores the cusp of the next computing paradigm — where everything can sense input from people as well as augment its appearance without use of traditional digital devices and monitors.
“This award will further Dan’s human-computer interaction research, which merges computer science with artistic practice to create interactive, immersive and aesthetically pleasing digital environments,” said Mark Giesbrecht, Director of the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science.
This research is strongly aligned with Ontario’s innovation agenda and will help to create a new digital media paradigm where content is available everywhere and on everything. Vogel’s Early Research Award is linked to a $1.9 million project called FIPS — the Facility for Fully Interactive Physio-digital Spaces — a research lab at the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science that’s funded in part by the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Ontario Research Fund.
