Anthony Steed wins 2016 VGTC Virtual Reality Technical Achievement Award

The  2016  Virtual  Reality  Technical  Achievement  Award  has been awarded to  Anthony  Steed, Head of the Virtual Environments and Computer Graphics group at UCL Computer Science, in  recognition  of  developments  that  have  significantly advanced research, engineering and applications of virtual reality systems.

The IEEE VGTC Virtual Reality Technical Achievement Award was established in 2005. It is given every year to recognize an individual for a seminal technical achievement in virtual and augmented reality, and VGTC members nominate individuals for the Virtual Reality Technical Achievement Award.

Anthony’s work has spanned a broad range of topics concerned with the engineering and application of virtual reality systems. One theme of engineering work has been virtual environment systems. This started with his PhD work on visual programming language for virtual reality. It has continued with work on distributed systems and

novel system architectures. A second theme has been effective interfaces for 3D user interaction using novel displays and interfaces that use body language and eye-gaze. A particular focus recently has been on low-latency interaction.

Complementing the engineering work, are several themes of evaluation, including presence within virtual environments, and supporting successful collaboration at a distance. In 2009, Anthony was the lead author of the book “Networked Graphics”, which summarises the state of the art in the field of distributed virtual environments.

Since 2005 Anthony has led the Virtual Environments and Computer Graphics group at UCL. He is also the Director of UCL’s Centre for Virtual Environments, Interaction and Visualisation, which runs a large doctoral training programme with over 50 partner companies.

Anthony is a member of the IEEE Visualization & Graphics Technical Committee and was program chair for IEEE Virtual Reality in 2007, 2008 & 2009. He was a founding editor of the journals Computational Visual Media, Frontiers in Robotics and AI, Virtual Environments and

IEEE Transaction on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games. He is an associate editor of International Journal of Human Computer Science and IEEE Transactions on Visualisation and Computer Graphics. He is also Chief Technology Officer of Asio Ltd, creators of Chirp (chirp.io).