|
Stefan Agamanolis
My name is Stefan Agamanolis. I work mainly in the area of digital media and communication technologies. I am not sure how to describe myself, but I am probably a combination of researcher, designer, scientist, artist, engineer, hacker, inventor, dreamer, or none of the above. Please feel free to make up your own mind about me... I am currently the Chief Executive of Distance Lab, a new research laboratory that I developed with Highlands & Islands Enterprise that aspires to be at the international forefront of innovation in digital media technologies. The mission of this lab is to bring together engineering, design, and the arts to challenge the way people think about distance and to help overcome its disadvantages in learning, health, relationships, culture, and other domains. I have over 10 years of experience inside the MIT Media Lab, first as a student and later as one of the founding research directors at Media Lab Europe, its former sister lab in Dublin, Ireland. There I led the Human Connectedness group, an interdisciplinary team of Masters-level researchers that explored the future of human relationships as mediated by technology. My group was the birthplace of several award-winning inventions, such as: Breakout for Two, an interactive installation for playing sports over a distance; the Iso-phone, an experimental communication device combining a telephone and a flotation tank; and tunA, a mobile music player that allows you to tune into what other people are listening to nearby. I have led or participated in projects that touch on a variety of themes: media spaces, remote collaboration and awareness, wearable computing, tele-health technologies, interactive television, automated video editing, immersive media recording, keepsakes of the future, social networking, sports over a distance, smart textiles, interactive storytelling, distance learning, tourism, and cultural exchange. I created a programming langauge called Isis that has been used to rapidly prototype high-performance multimedia applications, including several from my own portfolio. My work and that of my researchers has been exhibited in diverse venues including Ars Electronica (Austria), the Osaka National Museum of Art (Japan), the Victoria and Albert Museum (UK), the E-culture fair (Netherlands), and the Wired NextFest (USA). In addition to various academic and private seminars, I have delivered keynote presentations in several international forums including Prix Italia (Italy), Social Intelligence Design 2004 (Netherlands), the Powering Up with Broadband conference (UK), and EuroITV 2006 (Greece). I have participated on program and review committees for a number of scientific conferences including Ubicomp and ACM CHI. I hold MS and PhD degrees in Media Arts and Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I also hold a Bachelor of Arts degree with high honors in computer science from Oberlin College, with minors in film studies and philosophy. I was born and raised in the state of Ohio in the United States.
|
