Biography



 Bill Tomlinson is a Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, and a researcher in the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology. He studies the fields of environmental informatics, human-computer interaction, multi-agent systems and computer-supported learning. His book Greening through IT (MIT Press, 2010) examines the ways in which information technology can help people think and act on the broad scales of time, space, and complexity necessary for us to address the world's current environmental issues. In addition, he has authored dozens of papers across a range of journals and conferences in computing, the learning sciences, and the law. His work has been reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the LA Times, Wired.com, Scientific American Frontiers, CNN, and the BBC. In 2007, he received an NSF CAREER award, and in 2008 he was selected as a Sloan Research Fellow. In 2014, he was named to the EPA's Board of Scientific Counselors, joining the Sustainable and Healthy Communities subcommittee. He holds an A.B. in Biology from Harvard College, an M.F.A. in Experimental Animation from CalArts, and S.M. and Ph.D. degrees from the MIT Media Lab.

Professor Tomlinson's Erdös Number is 4 (Erdös, Specker, Lieberherr, Dourish, Tomlinson), and his Bacon Number is 3 (Bacon, Kornelis, Underhill, Tomlinson), thus making his Erdös-Bacon Number a 7. (Allowing for television, the Bacon Number drops to a 2 (Bacon, Alda, Tomlinson), and the Erdös-Bacon Number drops to a 6.) His animated film, Shaft of Light, screened at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival and dozens of other film festivals around the world. His 2009 paper with Andrew Torrance on patent systems has been cited in amicus briefs and in a writ filed with the United States Supreme Court. He has also had the honor to share a lab with one of the world's most educated parrots (Alex), and to exchange nose-blows with one of the world's most educated sea lions (Rio, video here).





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