Julian Petford

Photograph taken by Anne-Marie Mann

Julian Petford is a Scottish second year PhD student based in the SACHI Lab. Before starting his PhD he carried out a Computer Science batchelors degree, also at the University of St Andrews. His honours project was supervised by Miguel Nacenta and included the development of an application for the Microsoft PixelSense (formerly “Microsoft Surface”) touch-screeen tabletop computer which showcased the photographic works of the golf photographer “Lawrence Levy”, and allowed exploration of the Old Course during the “Making the Cut” exhibition which was hosted at the university library during the summer of 2013.

Again supervised by Miguel Nacenta, for his PhD he is developing a toolkit called ASPECTA (Affordable Spherically Projected Environments for the Construction of Tomorrow’s Applications) which includes the hardware and software for developers to easily create projection-based applications which harness the entire interior surface of a room as display space. The hardware is also designed to be affordable, making it much more accessible than standard approaches (multiple projectors or fisheye lenses) for both application developers and users.  For more information please see the project’s website.