Bio: more about teaching
Intermittently, I  taught a class I created [in partership with co-instructors (details below)] called "Telepresence Art and Applications" [the "Teleclass"] in CMU departments such as the School of Art, the Entertainment Technology Center, the Robotics Institute, and the Human-Computer Interaction Institute, refining an approach to guided brainstorming that fostered collaborations between students from applied art and technical disciplines in a way that truly leveraged the visual and technical aptitudes of both. I usually taught this with a co-instructor from another descipline, who also provided key insight on how the class should be designed and taught.

Co-instructors
In the past I taught the class with Garth Zeglin [robotics], David Wettergreen [robotics], Randy Eager [business/innovation transfer], and at different times with two students from earlier versions of the class: Michael Wagner [robotics], and Eben Meyers [entertainment technology].

Role of teaching and research

I discovered that teaching was an important part of my lab's research ecosystem because it:

• Involved new perspectives in our telepresence/remote experience research
• Forced me to explain my research in a clear way
• Enabled me to vicariously explore research ideas that fit my research umbrella, but that I would not ordinarily persue on my own
• Challenged and recontextualized ideas within the context of a new generation's world view
• Provided a gateway to involve potential new participants in the lab's work
• Presented a rare hands-on opportunity for students to produce a visionary prototype under expert multidisciplinary mentorship and with a substantial project budget [see sponsors below].
  

Results

Teleclass students have gone on to achieve amazing things at Google, SecondLife, PhD programs such as  Digital Media at GeorgiaTech, MFA programs, game companies, educational sofware companies, and more. Of course, these students had high potential before they took the class. However, the class presented a rare opportunity to produce a visionary prototype under expert multidisciplinary mentorship and with a substantial project budget [see sponsors below]. Using a guided brainstorming technique, the students would form into teams, refine an idea, and bring that idea to fruition by creating a physical prototype using any available technology.

• A report about the class projects and more can be found here.
  

Sponsors

At Carnegie Mellon:

• The School of Art
• The Robotics Institute
• The Tepper School of Business
• The Entertainment Technology Center

• The Lamelson Foundation