Photo of me on a good day		Kellogg S. Booth Scientific Director, GRAND NCE Professor, Department of Computer Science a.k.a. the Rev. Prof. Dr. Dr. Kellogg S. Booth BS (mathematics), Caltech (1968) MA (computer science), UC Berkeley (1970) DMph (metaphysics), Universal Life Church (add to your shopping cart) (1974) PhD (computer science), UC Berkeley (1975) CONTENTS Contact Information Biographical Information Teaching Activities    Read this before contacting me about CPSC 260 Research Activities    Read this before contacting me about undergraduate internships    Read this before contacting me about admission to a graduate program Pick Hits Favorite Quotes MAILING ADDRESS Department of Computer Science 201-2366 Main Mall The University of British Columbia Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4 CANADA OFFICE Room X861, ICICS/CS Building (former CICSR/CS Building) 2366 Main Mall (directions) 604-822-8193 (voice) 604-822-5485 (fax) HOME 1145 McLean Drive Vancouver, BC V5L 3N5 CANADA 604-872-3577 (voice) ELECTRONIC e-mail: ksbooth@cs.ubc.ca Web: http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~ksbooth Web: http://www.cs.ubc.ca/people/profile.jsp?id=ksbooth ERDÖS NUMBER: 2 (the same as my Knuth number) RÉSUMÉ: CV (pdf) Pedigree (genealogy)
Official diploma attesting to my first doctoral degree from the Universal Life Church
Over 60 years hitting the spot! -- photo taken Summer of '48 at Laguna Beach, CA

Biographical Information

Kellogg S. Booth is a Professor of Computer Science and the former Director of the Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre at the University of British Columbia. He has worked in the fields of computer graphics and human-computer interaction since 1968. Prior to UBC, he was a faculty member in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo (1977-1990), and before that a staff member at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (1968-1976). Research interests include human-computer interaction, visualization, computer graphics, user interface design, and analysis of algorithms. He is involved in a number of interdisciplinary research projects at UBC and elsewhere. He currently serves as the Scientific Director for GRAND, the Graphics, Animation and New Media, a Canada-wide network of centres of excellence in digital media.

• Scientific Director for the Graphics, Animation and New Media Network of Centres of Excellence (GRAND)
• Professor of Computer Science at UBC
• Member of the Multimodal User Experience Lab (MUX) at UBC
• Member of the Imager Laboratory for Graphics, Visualization, & Human-Computer Interaction at UBC
• Member of ICICS, the Institute for Computing, Information & Cognitive Systems at UBC
• Former Director of MAGIC, the Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre at UBC (1990-2002)
• Fellow of ASI, the British Columbia Advanced Systems Institute (1992-2004)
• Distinguished member of ACM, the Association for Computer Machinery

(Alternate biographical information is available here.)

Teaching Activities

Undergraduate and graduate internships and thesis supervision are by arrangement. You can see a list of the students and abstracts of previous bachelor's, master's and doctoral students theses. Please read about my research interests before enquiring about supervision.

This year I am teaching the following course(s).

• CPSC 260 Data Structures and Algorithms for Computer Engineers (Sep-Dec 2012)
  Note: If you are a student who is trying to register for this course, please be advised that I am not allowed to sign students into the course. If you are not able to register, you need to talk to an undergraduate advisor in Computer Science about the problem. There are various restrictions on registration that the advisors will understand. The listed prerequisite is APSC 160, but if you have had CPSC 111 or an equivalent course you can register for CPSC 260. Don't even think of trying to register if you do not have the prerequisite.

I teach these other courses from time to time, but not very recently.

• CPSC 344 Introduction to HCI Methods
• CPSC 444 Advanced Methods for Human-Computer Interaction
• CPSC 544 Human-Computer Interaction
• CPSC 590 Research Methods in Computer Science

UBC students interested in computer graphics, visualization, or human-computer interaction may wish to consider one or more of the following courses that are offered various terms. Contact individual instructors for additional information concerning the courses, including course syllabi, days and times, and course prerequistes.

• CPSC 314 Introduction to Computer Graphics
• CPSC 344 Introduction to HCI Methods
• CPSC 424 Geometric Modeling
• CPSC 444 User Interface Design
• CPSC 514 Computer Graphics: Rendering
• CPSC 524 Computer Graphics: Modeling
• CPSC 533C Information Visualization
• CPSC 533D Animation Physics
• CPSC 544 Human-Computer Interaction
• CPSC 590 Research Methods in Computer Science.
• EECE 418 Human-Computer Interfaces in Engineering Design.
• EECE 518 Human Interface Technologies.
• EPSE 592 Analysis of Variance in Educational Research.

A masters-level specialization in HCI is now available as part of a master's degree in one of the participating academic units.

Research Activities

• Almost all of my research is in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Current areas of research interest include
  • Collaboration technology
  • Educational technology
  • Structured annotation techniques for co-authored documents
  • Selected areas of computer graphics and virtual and augmented reality
• A list of possible thesis topics topics is a snapshot of my current interests. Supervision is always conditional on a mutually agreed upon research topic.
• GRAND is a new network of centres of excellence. Much of my research for the next five years will be related to GRAND.
• NECTAR was a research network funded by NSERC that focused on collaborative technology. Much of my research over the past five years was centred on NECTAR projects and most of the graduate students I supervised were affiliated with NECTAR. I am still actively working on a number of projects related to collaboration technology, especially tools for supporting collaboration on large, wall-sized displays and tabletop displays. Students interested in research opportunities in this area should contact me.
• The EVHL Enhanced Virtual Hand Laboratory was a multi-year interdisciplinary research project at Simon Fraser University that examined a number of aspects of augments and virtual reality, as well as hand-based interaction techniques. I still have on-going interest in applying the results of that research, and more recent work in the field, to analyze and extend current interaction techniques, especially for table top and wall-mounted displays for collaborative systems where augmented reality techniques are employed to integrate physical objects with virtual objects.
• Students I supervise participate in the MUX Lab meetings (more or less weekly) to discuss research in HCI and related areas.
• A fairly complete list of my publications and summary of research activity is contained in my CV.

Pick Hits

These are some links that I have found interesting or fun, but some (such as the first one) have serious content.

• De Millo, R. A., Lipton, R. J., and Perlis, A. J. (1979). Social processes and proofs of theorems and programs. Commun. ACM 22(5):271-280 (May). doi.acm.org/10.1145/359104.359106
• Everyone in Computer Science should learn How to Write a Systems Paper.
• Software bloat is real, and coming to a neighborhood near you.
• Normally I am not a big fan of claims made by the AI community, but this new anti-theft system looks like it might really work!
• If you don't think this is funny, you are not old enough to appreciate the history of computer graphics.
• If you are sure whether you want to buy a new Sharp quad pixel display, you may want to just update your current monitor to full color by downloading the Squant plug-in instead.
• Digital media rights are an important concern for everyone.
• Human-computer interaction is designing pleasant experiences for users to enjoy.
• Frustrated using the Faculty Service Centre, the Student Service Centre, or WebCT? There is a better way but it seems to be off the web now!
• For sure you want to beware of this dog!
• The end of the world (rated "R") is nearer than you think now that the Sixties are definitely over.
• On the World Wide Web there are all kinds of situations in which an Error 404 can occur, such as this and this.
• Short on cash? You can easily generate your own Nigerian letter, use someone else's, or learn more about the field.
• Have you seen the winners in the Bush in 30 seconds contest?
• Pick a card, any card!
• This is the best T-shirt I've seen so far.
• Here's the real truth behind all of that bizarre spam e-mail you get with the weird characters inserted into normal words and seemingly meaningless literary text embedded in what appear to be advertisements.
• Although many people thought that Dan Savage's favorite anti-shrimp website was just a joke, recent events in the Gulf of Mexico have proven this to be hardly a laughing matter.
• There are powerful Demotivators (R) you will enjoy including some new topical T-shirts related to the recent Gulf of Mexico crisis.
• When all else fails, call the Internet Help Desk for a good time.

Favorite Quotes

• "I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone."
  -- Bjarne Stroustrup

• "Education is what, when, and why to do things. Training is how to do it. In science, if you know what you are doing, you should not be doing it. In engineering, if you do not know what you are doing, you should not be doing it."
  -- Richard Hamming

• "If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment."
  -- Lord Rutherford

• "Any problem in computing can be solved by adding another level of indirection."
  -- David Wheeler, according to Roger Needham, according to Butler Lampson et al.

• "Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire."
  -- William Butler Yeats

• "Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize."
  -- Tom Lehrer

• "On my income tax 1040 it says 'Check this box if you are blind.' I wanted to put a check mark about three inches away."
  -- Tom Lehrer

• "I'm not going to buy my kids an encyclopedia. Let them walk to school like I did."
  -- Lawrence Peter Berra

• "No one goes there anymore because it's too crowded."
  -- Lawrence Peter Berra

• "In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not."
  -- Lawrence Peter Berra

• "Do not compute the totality of your poultry population until all the manifestations of incubation have been entirely completed."
  -- William Jennings Bryan

• "There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life."
  -- Frank Zappa

• "Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark. Professionals built the Titanic."
  -- unattributed

Credits

Source file: index.shtml Last modified: Monday, 04-Mar-2013 08:25:56 PST For more information: ksbooth@cs.ubc.ca Disclaimer: No animals were abused or mistreated during the production of this Web page. May contain traces of peanuts. Your mileage will vary. Taxes and shipping not included. Void where prohibited by law.