Rebecca Allen directs the Liminal Devices group at Media Lab Europe. She is an internationally recognised artist and research pioneer in 3D computer graphics, human motion simulation and interactive media. Allen holds a Professorship at the Department of Design | Media Arts at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). She was founding Chair of the department and founding Co-Director of the UCLA Centre for Digital Arts. From 1996-2002 she directed the Emergence Project at UCLA, an Intel funded research effort involving artificial life, 3D virtual environments, augmented reality and unique multimodal interfaces.

Previously, Allen was Creative Director/Executive Producer and 3D Visionary at Virgin Interactive Entertainment; she was a member of the world-renowned NYIT Computer Graphics Laboratory and MIT's Architecture Machine Group (predecessor of MIT Media Lab). Rebecca received a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and MS from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Allen's work crosses the boundaries of art, design and science. She has worked extensively in Europe, producing commissioned projects in Spain, Germany, Italy, England and Austria, and has collaborated with artists such as Kraftwerk, Devo, Peter Gabriel, Twyla Tharp and La Fura dels Baus.

In addition to her commissioned work, Rebecca has designed and directed research-oriented projects for numerous clients including CBS, NBC, FOX, PBS/Nova, BBC, TVE (Spain), Time Warner, Island, Mattel, Philips, Nintendo, Taejon World Expo, Seville World Expo, Apple and DARPA. Her artwork is exhibited internationally and is part of the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art and Centre Georges Pompidou. Her many awards include an Emmy award for Outstanding Individual Achievement.

More about Rebecca Allen can be found on http://www.rebeccaallen.com

Enrico Costanza graduated from the Electronics Department of the University of York (UK) with a Master of Engineering degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering. In York he worked on research related to computer vision, tangible user interfaces and video augmented environments (a list of publications can be found here). His research aims for a more natural and intuitive interaction between people and machines.

Enrico started studying Electronic Engineering in Italy. He soon realized that he preferred to focus on people rather than on technology alone; so he got interested in the use of computers as tools for artistic expression and in innovative/unusual human-computer interfaces (HCI).

He transferred to York to complete his studies, as he foresaw the opportunity to focus on both technical and creative aspects of communication via electronic media in the newly formed Media Engineering research group there. Following the development of an active interest in visual art (photography, darkroom techniques, and video-making), he decided to include subjects related to visual perception, video production and lighting into his course of study.

In September 2003 Enrico joined the Liminal Devices group at Media Lab Europe. At MLE he works under the supervision of Rebecca Allen exploring and looking for solutions to the requirements of interfaces for mobile and wearable computers. Most of the existing mobile interfaces mimic the desktop metaphor; this interaction paradigm is being radically re-considered giving particular importance to issues related to user attention and privacy, towards the idea of intimate interfaces. Position information and biosignals play a central role in the interface input system.

More about Enrico Costanza can be found on http://www.media.mit.edu/~enrico/

I became interested in visual representations of 3D space while studying architecture in Bolton Street, where I stayed for three years before switching to Visual communications in the College of Marketing and Design. There I studied photography, printmaking, illustration, life drawing and interactive design. In my final year I focused on 3D animation and simple programming.

After College I worked in Windmill Lane (a Dublin based post production facility) for two years, working on product advertisements, channel identities and program intro sequences. I moved to Pluto (a post production house that was just starting) for a year before taking time out to do my own animation projects and experiments.

During this time I collaborated with musicians and photographers on various projects and later received a Frameworks grant from the Irish Film Board to produce a short animation.

Samuel Inverso is a Research Assistant in the Liminal Devices group. His main area of interest is in Computer Science and Cognitive Neuroscience, focusing on Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) for communication and control.

Sam received his Master's in Computer Science from Rochester Institute of Technology on "Automatic Error Recovery Using P3 Response Verification for a Brain-Computer Interface."

In the Liminal Devices group, Sam is actively researching applications utilizing Electromyography (EMG) and Electroencephalogram (EEG) in mobile wearable interfaces, and developing methods to optimize bandwidth in BCIs.

More about Sam Inverso can be found on http://www.inverso.name/research

Hannes studied visual communication in Prof. Joachim Sauter's Media Art department of the University of Fine Arts, Berlin. There he focused on the visualisation of 'dynamic datasets' before dedicating himself more and more to the development of devices and installations that seek to integrate inconspicuously and subversivly into the real world. In his work he seek to connect everyday life reality and virtuality in a subtle and natural way.

During his studies that brought him to Amsterdam, Tel Aviv and the Museum of Communication in Berlin, Hannes co-founded '200ok', an experimental platform and thinktank for digital art projects. In summer 2003 he graduated with the installation 'lies, all lies!', that sought to create a awareness for mediamade manipulations by manipulating the 'ultimate' and most archaic picture, that is ones own shadow.

His research and interests involve the need to evoke emotions through the use of augmented reality and ubiquitous computing.

More about Hannes Nehls can be found on http://www.200ok.de

Alberto Perdomo was born and grew up in the Canary Islands, Spain, where he attended German schools. Then he went on to study Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at the University of Karlsruhe (Germany), focusing on Systems Engineering and Microelectronics.

In December 2003 he completed his master's thesis there which involved the development of a multisensor system for a context-aware mobile health monitoring platform.

Alberto's research interests comprise mobile and wearable interface technologies as well as the enhancement of such devices using context-awareness based on sensors.

Juanjo Andres Prado worked in the Media Lab Europe under the supervision of Rebecca Allen with Alberto Perdomo on the Connecting Devices project. During this project he developed, designed, and prototyped hardware and software for a generic Bluetooth computing platform and a daughter board for analog signal acquisition and digital conversion.

Juanjo was born in Valladolid, Spain, and studied at the German School in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, which prepared him for University studies in Germany.

He is now researching smart cloths with textile electrodes for his master's thesis at the Institute for Information Processing Technology in Karlsruhe Germany.