George Fitzmaurice

Biography

George Fitzmaurice, Ph.D. is the Head of User Interface Research for Autodesk Research and a Senior Research Scientist. He has been with Autodesk (including Alias) for over 13 years conducting research in 2D and 3D UIs including: input devices, large displays, two-handed interaction, multi-touch, pen-based UIs, TrackingMenus, spatially-aware displays, 3D navigation and tangible UIs. In the HCI community he established the field of Graspable UIs which is the pre-cursor to what is known as Tangible UIs. Currently, he is leading research projects on Advanced Learning Technologies and Expert & Community Workflow Visualizations for feature-rich software applications.

Working with his colleagues he has helped to author over 30 HCI papers and over 30 patents. Notable product contributions include Maya 1.0 UI, SketchBook Pro UI design, ShowMotion™ for Showcase and the 3D Navigation tools (ViewCube™ and SteeringWheels™) for Autodesk products. Fitzmaurice received a B.Sc. in mathematics with computer science at MIT, an M.Sc. in computer science at Brown University and a Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Toronto.