Toby L. J. Howard is an Honorary Reader in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Manchester in the UK. He was appointed Lecturer in 1985, and was Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department 2011–2019. He retired from the University in 2020 and was appointed to an Honorary position.[10][11][12][13][14]

Toby Howard
Alma materUniversity of Manchester
Scientific career
Fields
InstitutionsUniversity of Manchester
Doctoral students
Website

Education edit

Howard was educated at Birkenhead School, and then the University of Manchester receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science and a Master of Science degree in 1983 for work on the graphics facilities of the MU6 network.[15]

Research edit

Howard's research interests are computer graphics and virtual environments.[16][17][18][19] as a member of the Advanced Interfaces Group (AIG)[20] and has supervised several doctoral students.[1][3][5][7][9][21] Howard's research projects have included:

  • Virtual reality as a rehabilitative technology for phantom limb[22] experience, investigating using virtual environments for treating phantom limb pain in amputees.[21]
  • Augmented reality, with preliminary work on an interactive display for public engagement.[21]
  • Virtual environments for psychology research. Telepresence and telepathy in immersive virtual reality; used immersive virtual environments to test for telepathic effects:[21]
  • Augmented Reality Image Synthesis (ARIS): augmenting photographs with correctly illuminated objects in real time.[21]
  • Virtual environments for crime scene investigation. We worked with Greater Manchester Police on the REVEAL project, investigating reconstructing crime scenes using virtual environments with accurate global illumination.[21]
  • VR for large-scale applications" (VRLSA) – concentrated on the development of industrial applications and resulted in the release of MAVERIK[18] VR kernel.[21]

Teaching edit

Howard led the undergraduate courses COMP27112 Computer Graphics and Image Processing and COMP37111 Advanced Computer Graphics. At Masters level he taught computer graphics and databases.

Public engagement edit

Howard was active in public engagement, focusing on projects with schools. He founded and led the annual UK Schools Computer Animation Competition which ran 2008–2018.[23]

Other activities edit

Howard is active in documenting the history of computers developed at the University of Manchester.

References edit

  1. ^ a b Albin-Clark, Adrian (2012). Simulating characters for observation: Bridging theory and practice (PhD thesis). University of Manchester.
  2. ^ Albin-Clark, A.; Howard, T. L. J.; Anderson, B. (2011). "Real-time computer graphics simulation of blockplay in early childhood". Computers & Education. 57 (4): 2496. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2011.07.004.
  3. ^ a b Broughton, Russell Alan (2007). Framework for plausible augmentation of virtual environments (PhD thesis). University of Manchester.
  4. ^ Broughton, R. A.; Howard, T. L. J. (2005). "Augmenting existing virtual environments with plausible naturalistic clutter". 2005 International Conference on Cyberworlds (CW'05). p. 8. doi:10.1109/CW.2005.22. ISBN 978-0769523781. S2CID 187981.
  5. ^ a b Caillette, Fabrice (2006). Real-time markerless 3-D human body tracking (PhD thesis). University of Manchester. Archived from the original on 20 July 2013.
  6. ^ Caillette, F.; Galata, A.; Howard, T. (2008). "Real-time 3-D human body tracking using learnt models of behaviour" (PDF). Computer Vision and Image Understanding. 109 (2): 112. doi:10.1016/j.cviu.2007.05.005.
  7. ^ a b Gaborit, Nicholas (2006). Interaction mechanisms in a collaborative large scale virtual environment for public consultation (PhD thesis). University of Manchester.
  8. ^ Gaborit, N.; Howard, T. (2004). "A collaborative virtual environment for public consultation in the urban planning process". Proceedings Theory and Practice of Computer Graphics. p. 104. doi:10.1109/TPCG.2004.1314459. ISBN 978-0769521374. S2CID 14786779.
  9. ^ a b Sayeed, Rezwan (2010). Illustrative non-photorealistic rendering techniques for GPU architectures (PhD thesis). University of Manchester.
  10. ^ Toby Howard publications indexed by Google Scholar  
  11. ^ Toby Howard publications indexed by Microsoft Academic
  12. ^ Toby Howard at DBLP Bibliography Server  
  13. ^ Howard, Toby L J's publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
  14. ^ Toby L J Howard author profile page at the ACM Digital Library  
  15. ^ Howard, Toby L.J. (1983). Graphics facilities for the MU6 network (MSc thesis). University of Manchester. Archived from the original on 20 July 2013.
  16. ^ Caillette, F.; Howard, T. (2004). "Real-Time Markerless Human Body Tracking Using Colored Voxels and 3-D Blobs" (PDF). Third IEEE and ACM International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality. p. 266. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.59.1508. doi:10.1109/ISMAR.2004.50. ISBN 978-0769521916. S2CID 10235875.
  17. ^ Howard, T. L. J. (1991). A Practical introduction to PHIGS and PHIGS plus. Boston: Addison-Wesley. ISBN 978-0201416411.
  18. ^ a b Hubbold, R.; Cook, J.; Keates, M.; Gibson, S.; Howard, T.; Murta, A.; West, A.; Pettifer, S. (1999). "GNU/MAVERIK". Proceedings of the ACM symposium on Virtual reality software and technology – VRST '99. p. 66. doi:10.1145/323663.323674. ISBN 978-1581131413. S2CID 9444800.
  19. ^ Gibson, S.; Hubbold, R. J.; Cook, J.; Howard, T. L. J. (2003). "Interactive reconstruction of virtual environments from video sequences". Computers & Graphics. 27 (2): 293. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.101.7413. doi:10.1016/S0097-8493(02)00285-6.
  20. ^ http://aig.cs.man.ac.uk Archived 2004-07-30 at the Wayback Machine
  21. ^ a b c d e f g "Toby Howard: research". Archived from the original on 15 April 2014.
  22. ^ Murray, C. D.; Pettifer, S.; Howard, T.; Patchick, E. L.; Caillette, F.; Kulkarni, J.; Bamford, C. (2007). "The treatment of phantom limb pain using immersive virtual reality: Three case studies". Disability & Rehabilitation. 29 (18): 1465–9. doi:10.1080/09638280601107385. PMID 17729094. S2CID 15764265.
  23. ^ "The UK Schools Computer Animation Competition". animation18.cs.manchester.ac.uk.