Barbara Rauch's practice-based research in Fine Art focuses on new technologies and how they alter our current understanding of human consciousness. The research provided the basis for her PhD thesis entitled 'Natural and Digital Virtual Realities - a practice-based exploration of dreaming and online virtual environments' (2005).

Building on her AHRC funded project "3D Virtual Emotions", Rauch is looking in particular at evolutionary aspects of human and animal facial expression to reveal conscious and subconscious experience (AHRC Small Grant in the Creative and Performing Arts scheme January 2006 - June 2007).

Professor John Harrison is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College and Associate Director of the SCIRIA Research Unit at Camberwell College of Arts.

He is a Chartered Civil Engineer, and holds both Masters and Doctoral degrees in Engineering Rock Mechanics. After graduating in Civil Engineering in 1979, he spent seven years in the civil engineering industry, both in the UK and overseas, working for both contractors and consulting engineers.

He is a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, the British Geotechnical Association, the British Tunnelling Society and the International Society for Rock Mechanics (ISRM). In addition to being a member of the ISRM, he is also a member of the ISRM's Commission on Education.

His main research interests are in the mechanics and geometry of fractured rock masses, and together with tunnelling in rock, these are fields in which he also acts as a consultant to civil and mining engineering companies.

In September 2001 he took part in the first ISRM Lecture Tour, which visited the universities of Beijing, Xuzhou and Chongqing in China. In March 2002 he was the international keynote speaker at "Bergmekanikdag 2002", the annual showcase of Swedish Rock Engineering Research held in Stockholm. He has been invited to lecture at the Western Australia School of Mines in Kalgoorlie and Kungl Tekniska Hogskolan, Stockholm.

He is the co-author, together with Professor John Hudson, of the two textbooks Engineering Rock Mechanics: an introduction to the principles and Engineering Rock Mechanics: illustrative worked examples.

Dr. John Tchalenko leads a research programme studying artists' eye movements using advanced eye tracking technology. Dr. Tchalenko is currently conducting a new study using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI) combined with eye tracking to investigate brain activity patterns during drawing.

His collaborators on this project include Prof. Chris Miall of the Behavioural Brain Sciences Centre, Birmingham University and Prof. Chris Frith, Wellcome Department of Cognitive Neurology, Institute of Neurology, London. Several of Drawing and Cognition projects have been supported by the Wellcome Trust.

James Faure Walker (born 1948, London) studied painting and aesthetics at St Martins (1966-70) and the Royal College of Art (1970-72). He began writing criticism in the mid 1970s, and in 1976 he co-founded Artscribe - a journal for contemporary arts which he edited until 1983. His writings have been published in Studio International, Modern Painters, Mute, Computer Generated Imaging, Wired, Art Review, and he has contributed to a number of exhibition catalogues.

A long-standing contributor to Siggraph, the annual conference on computer graphics, he has participated in numerous international computer arts festivals and exhibited widely in Austria, Germany, Holland, Japan, Russia, Spain and the USA. In 1998, he won the Golden Plotter first prize at Computerkunst, Gladbeck, Germany.

Recent exhibitions include the New York Digital Salon, 1979 at Bloomberg Space, London, Filament at the London Print Studio, and a solo show at DAM Gallery, Berlin. He was awarded a three year AHRB Fellowship for research into painting and the digital studio in 2002, and is the author of 'Painting the Digital River: How an Artist Learned to Love the Computer', published by Prentice Hall (USA) in 2006.

Dr. Angela Geary is founder and former director of the SCIRIA Research Unit, before she went to Glasgow School of Art in January 2008. Her research interests span art and science, with activities including technologically mediated fine art practice, structural stress visualisation in sculpture and multi-sensory interaction.

In 2004 Dr. Geary was instrumental in the conception and successful designation of the SCIRIA Research Unit at UAL. The Unit was formed on the basis of converging research activities in science, art and computer technology research taking place at Camberwell College of Arts and her established collaborative relationship with scientist Dr. John P. Harrison at Imperial College London. Dr. Harrison is associate director of the Unit, facilitating its core mission of art and science collaboration.

Her current research projects include FELSSO - an AHRC and Henry Moore Foundation funded project in collaboration with Imperial College and Tate, exploring the application of 3D scanning and engineering analysis to predict structural damage in stone sculpture and Oil&Air - a practice led exploration of the impact of old and new energy production industries funded by the Rootstein Hopkins Foundation.

Since the mid 1990s, Dr. Geary has pioneered the development of accessible 3D computer visualisation techniques for the documentation and interpretation of cultural heritage collections. She provides consultation in this field to a range of museums and collections including Historic Royal Palaces, the National Trust and the Museum of London.

In 2005 she led the VEMDis team to win a finalist's prize in the National Research Councils UK Business Plan Awards for a scheme to commercialise a novel augmented reality display device for museums. She is now a co-director of VEMDis Ltd., a UAL spin out company, founded to develop augmented reality display technology and services for museums.

Tobias Rupp is administrating the SCIRIA research unit. His tasks also include development and maintenance of this website.

Tobias has various backgrounds. He spent several years developing business software with global market leader SAP. Besides, he has been working as a jazz guitarist (Masters degree in jazz guitar/music teaching) and as a translator English-German for the European Commission.

Derek Pullen is Head of Sculpture Conservation at Tate Britian, the national gallery of British art, and was collaborating on SCIRIA's FELSSO project.

Recent developments in computer vision technologies within fields as diverse as surveillance, bio-informatics and the film industry, together with advanced image processing algorithms, present opportunities for the development of gestural computer interfaces allowing physical gesture (e.g. a ‘thumbs-up’ signal with the hand) to be interpreted by the computer.

This research is applying such technologies, together with the results of recent research on human biomechanics and neurobiology, in the development of an ergonomic computer interface that uses hand gestures distinguishable and interpretable by a computer vision system. Integral to this work is the development of a formal gestural syntax and an associated classification system.