"How Talking Raccoons will Save the World: Animatronics, Education, and Community"
4 p.m.
Alumni Hall
Keynote Speaker: Paul H. Dietz, Distinguished Engineer in Residence, Department of Computer Science
The Animatronics Workshop is a different sort of school robotics program where kids develop characters, write stories, and bring them to life with their own robotic creations. The workshop, co-founded by Paul Dietz and his wife Cathy, emphasizes teaching kids to work creatively across both technical and artistic disciplines. This talk will describe the history of the program and current efforts to make it accessible to teachers throughout Canada. It will conclude with a brief look at some other projects that use tech to create compelling experiences with the goal of fostering community.
Paul Dietz spent most of his career in corporate research, including senior research positions at Walt Disney Imagineering, Mitsubishi Electric and Microsoft. He is best known for his early work on multitouch interfaces – now the primary way we interact with phones, tablets, and many other electronic devices. More recently, he invented a way to create displays which can show different images to each viewer, even when many people are looking at the same display at the same time. He founded Misapplied Sciences to commercialize this technology, which you can now experience at the Detroit airport. It was recently named to Popular Science’s list of the top innovations for 2022. Dietz holds over 75 US patents. Currently, he is a Distinguished Engineer in Residence in Computer Science at the University of Toronto where he is focusing on projects that address societal needs.
Location: Victoria College Alumni Hall/ Foyer
Victoria College’s annual Research Day will take place on March 27th, 2023. Research Day brings together Vic students from all disciplines and provides an opportunity to share your work with fellow students, professors, and the Vic community. If you have been conducting research in any discipline, you are encouraged to submit a proposal for an interdisciplinary poster session. All Vic students, and any students enrolled in Victoria College programs, are eligible to participate.
How Research Day will work: Successful applicants will contribute poster presentations that will be on display in the foyer of the Old Vic building throughout the day, and will have an opportunity to talk about their presentation with expert judges from units around Victoria College. The event will conclude with a keynote presentation, an award ceremony, and a catered reception.
