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Sean White

Senior Research Lead
Sunnyvale, CA

Sean White leads a research team at Nokia Research Center and holds an appointment as a Research Collaborator at the Smithsonian Institution. His work explores the ways we interact with the world and each other through the intersection of mobile computing, mixed and augmented reality, and human computer interaction. He is a 2009 Tech Award Laureate for his research developing an electronic field guide.


Dr. White has previously served as the VP of Technology at Lycos, Inc., where his systems have been used by millions of users, CTO of WhoWhere?, Inc., a provider of early communication services, and member of the research staff at Interval Research Corporation, where he lead research projects investigating online communities. Sean has served on advisory boards for NYC Learning Network, New York Sun Works, Environmental Defense Fund, Herman Miller Red, Gravity, OpenVoice, and Evite. He also served as a table facilitator for the Climate and Energy track of the 2007 Clinton Global Initiative Summit. Dr. White received his BS and MS in  Computer Science from Stanford University and his MS in Mechanical Engineering and PhD in Computer Science from Columbia University.

Professional Activities

  • Organizing Committee and Demo Co-Chair, IEEE and ACM ISMAR 2011.
  • Registration Chair, ACM UIST 2011.
  • Area Chair, IEEE and ACM ISMAR 2010.
  • Demo/Showcase Chair, IEEE and ACM ISMAR 2009.
  • Mobile Committee, IEEE and ACM ISMAR 2009.
  • Program Committee, INTETAIN 2009.
  • Program Committee, ACM CHI Works-In-Progress, 2009.
  • Program Committee, ACM International Workshop on Urban, Community, and Social Applications of Networked Sensing Systems—UrbanSense08, Urban Sensing Workshop, 2008.
  • Publicity Chair, ACM UIST, 2008.
  • Publicity Chair, INTETAIN, 2008.
  • Program Committee, SPIE Conference on Multimedia Computing and Networking, San Jose, CA, January 29-31,1996.
  • Session Chair, Applications: entertainment and the electronic communities, COMPCON 94, San Francisco, CA, February 28–March 4, 1994.
  • Co-organizer, Online Communities Conference, Interval Research Corp., Palo Alto, CA, May 17–18, 1993.

Publications

Dissertation

  • White, S., Interaction and Presentation Techniques for Situated Visualization, PhD Thesis, Columbia University, New York, NY, 2009.

Refereed Journal Articles

  • White, S., Morozov, P., and Feiner, S., Site Visit by Situated Visualization in Calabrese, F. et al., "Urban Computing and Mobile Devices," IEEE Pervasive Comp., vol.6, no.3, July–Sept. 2007, pp. 52-57. (GSC=4,
  • Barton, S., Sun, Y., Chandra, B., White, S., Hone, J. Mediated Enzyme Electrodes with Combined Micro- and Nanoscale Supports, Electrochemical and Solid-State Letters, Volume 10, Issue 5, pp. B96–B100, June 2007. (GSC=6
  • Barton, S., Sun, Y., Chandra, B., White, S., Hone, J Mediated Enzyme Electrodes with Combined Micro- and Nanoscale Supports, Virtual Journal of Nanoscale Science & Technology, March 19, 2007.
  • Agarwal, G., Belhumeur, P., Feiner, S., Jacobs, D., Kress, W.J., Ramamoorthi, R., Bourg, N., Dixit, N., Ling, H., Mahajan, D.,Russell, R., Shirdhonkar, S., Sunkavalli, K., and White, S. First Steps Toward an Electronic Field Guide for Plants. Taxon, Journal of the International Association for Plant Taxonomy, 55(3), August 2006, pp. 597–610. (GSC=21,

Refereed Conference Papers

  • Ashbrook, D., Baudisch, P., White, S. Subtle and Eyes-Free Mobile Input with a Magnetically-Tracked Finger Ring, to be appear in Proc. CHI 2011, Vancouver, B.C., May 7–12.
  • White, S., Feng, D., Feiner, S. Interaction and Presentation Techniques for Shake Menus in Tangible Augmented Reality, Proc. ISMAR 2009, Orlando, FL, October 19–23, 2009, pp. 39–48. (GSC=5, AR=19%)
  • White, S., Feiner, S.,SiteLens: Situated Visualization Techniques for Urban Site Visits, Proc. ACM CHI 2009, Boston, MA, April 4–9, 2009, pp. 1117–1120. (GSC=9, AR=25%)
  • Belhumeur, P.,  Chen, D., Feiner, S., Jacobs, D., Kress, W. J., Ling, H., Lopez, I.,  Ramamoorthi, R., Shirdhonkar, S.,  White, S., and Zhang, L.,Searching the World's Herbaria: A System for Visual Identification of Plant Species, Proc. European Conference on Computer Vision, Part IV, Marseille, France, October 12–18, 2008, pp. 116–129. (GSC=9)
  • Oda, O., Lister, L., White, S., and Feiner S. Developing an Augmented Reality Racing Game. Proc. INTETAIN 2008 (Second Int’l. Conf. on Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment), Playa del Carmen, Mexico, January 8–10, 2008.  (GSC=16)
  • White, S., Lister, L., and Feiner, S. Visual Hints for Tangible Gestures. Proc. ISMAR 2007 (IEEE and ACM Int’l. Symp. on Mixed and Augmented Reality), Nara, Japan, November 13–16, 2007, pp. 47–50.  (GSC=9, AR=32%)
  • White, S., Marino, D., and Feiner, S., Designing a Mobile User Interface for Automated Species Identification, Proc. ACM CHI 2007, April 28–May 3, 2007, pp. 291–294.CHI 2007 Best Note Award(GSC=16, AR=25%))
  • White, S., Feiner, S., and Kopylec, J. Virtual Vouchers: Prototyping a Mobile Augmented Reality User Interface for Botanical Species Identification. Proc. IEEE Symp. on 3D User Interfaces 2006, Alexandria, VA, March 25–26, 2006, pp. 119–126. (GSC=17, AR=32%)
  • Barton, S., White, S., Sun, Y., Chandra, B., Hone, J. Multiscale Materials for High-Power Biocatalytic Electrodes. Proc. AIChE Annual Meeting, 273e, 2005.
  • Singer, A., Hindus, D., Stifelman, L., and White, S., Tangible Progress: Less is More in Somewire Audio Spaces. Proc. ACM CHI 1999, May 15-20, 1999, pp. 104–111. (GSC=63, AR=25%)
  • Schiano, D. J. and White, S., The First Noble Truth of Cyberspace: People are People (Even When They MOO). Proc. ACM CHI 1998, April 18-23, 1998, pp. 352–359. (GSC=56, AR=23%)

Book Chapters

  • White, S.and Feiner, S. Dynamic, Abstract Representations of Audio in a Mobile Augmented Reality Conferencing System. To appear in Alem, L. and Huang, W (eds.), Mobile Collaborative Augmented Reality Systems: Recent trends, Springer, NY, USA, 2011.
  • Kalkofen, D., Sandor, C., White, S. and Schmalstieg, D. Visualization Techniques for Augmented Reality. To appear in Furht, B. (ed), Handbook of Augmented Reality Technologies and Applications, Springer, NY, USA, 2011.
  • White, S., Augmented Reality: Using Mobile Visualization to Persuade, in Fogg, B.J. and Eckles, D. (eds.), Mobile Persuasion, Stanford University, 2007, pp. 55–62. (GSC=34

Refereed Workshop Papers

  • White, S.,Feiner, S., Dynamic, Abstract Representations of Audio in a Mobile Augmented Reality Conferencing System, IEEE and ACM ISMAR 2010 International Workshop on Mobile Collaborative Augmented Reality, Seoul, Korea, October 13, 2010.
  • Thau, D., Morris, R., White, S., Contemporary Challenges in Ambient Data Integration for Biodiversity Informatics, 2nd International Workshop on Ambient Data Integration, Algarve, Portugal, November 1-6, 2009.
  • White, S.Interaction with the Environment: Sensor Data Visualization in Outdoor Augmented Reality. ISMAR 2009 Workshop, Lets Go Out: Research in Outdoor Mixed and Augmented Reality, Orlando, FL, October 19, 2009.
  • White, S.Interaction and Presentation Techniques for Situated Visualization. UIST 2008 Doctoral Symposium, UIST 2008 Adjunct Proceedings, Monterey, CA, October 20–22, 2008, pp. 19–22.
  • White, S., Morozov, P., Feiner, S. Progress Towards Site Visit by Situated Visualization, Proceedings of ACM CHI 2008 Workshop: Urban Mixed Reality, April 5–April 10, 2008.
  • White, S., Morozov, P., Feiner, S., Imaging for Insight: Site Visit by Situated Visualization, Proceedings of ACM CHI 2007 Workshop: Imaging the City, April 28–May 3, 2007.

Refereed Posters

  • White, S., Feng, D., Feiner, S., ShakeMenus: Towards Activation and Placement Techniques for Prop-Based 3D Graphical Menus, IEEE VR 2009, Lafayette, LA, March 14–15, 2009, pp. 129-130.
  • White, S., Marino, D., and Feiner S. LeafView: A User Interface for Automated Botanical Species Identification and Data Collection. ACM UIST 2006 Adjunct Proceedings, Montreux, Switzerland, October 15–18, 2006, pp. 101–102.
  • Livingston, M., Lederer, A., Ellis, S., White, S., and Feiner, S., Vertical Vergence Calibration for Augmented Reality Displays. Proc. IEEE Virtual Reality 2006, March 2006, pp. 293–294.
  • Eaddy, M., Peterson, E., Waugh, J., Benko, H., White, S., Feiner, S., Goblin: A Platform for 3D, Virtual Reality, and Augmented Reality Applications and Games. Microsoft Faculty Summit, Redmond, WA, June 18-19, 2005.

Panels

  • AMH Industry Panel. ISMAR 2010, Seoul, Korea, October 15, 2010.
  • Media Showcase Interactivity Demo Panel II. CHI 2010, Atlanta, Georgia, April 14, 2010.
  • 2009 Tech Awards Laureate Panel. Change that Counts Conference, Santa Clara, CA, November 20, 2009.
  • Art Beyond Sight: Technology and the Senses. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, October 16-17, 2009.
  • Building a Career in VR.IEEE VR 2009, Lafayette, LA, October 14-18, 2009.
  • Sustainable Design, Interaction Design Association (IxDA), New York, NY, Jan. 24, 2008.
  • Next Wave Panel. Comdex, Las Vegas, NV, 1995.