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Aaron Bloomfield

Aaron Bloomfield

Assistant Professor of Computer Science

Office: Rice Hall, Room 403
Phone: (434) 982-2215
Fax: (434) 982-2214
Email: aaron@virginia.edu
Home Page: Aaron Bloomfield

Department of Computer Science
School of Engineering and Applied Science
University of Virginia
85 Engineer's Way, P.O. Box 400740
Charlottesville, Virginia 22904-4740

"No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously."

Areas Of Interest

Computer science education, computer graphics, virtual reality, and haptics.

Biographical Sketch

Aaron Bloomfield received his Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Pennsylvania in 2003. He joined the Department of Computer Science at the University of Virginia in August 2004. While a graduate student at Penn, he had extensive teaching experience, and won a number of awards, including "Teaching Assistant of the Year" twice. In 2005 he was recognized for his excellence in teaching at UVa with the "ACM Professor of the Year Award". He serves as Faculty Advisor for the UVa ACM student chapter.

Research

Bloomfield's research interests in computer graphics and user interfaces focus on haptics: using the sense of touch to provide feedback to a virtual reality user. For example, by placing small, vibrating motors (aka 'tactors') on the skin's surface, the user can 'feel' the virtual world as they move through it - the tactors activate when the user collides with an object in the virtual environment. He is also interested in computer science education, specifically the undergraduate experience.

Selected Publications

  • A Taxonomy and Comparison of Haptic Actions for Disassembly Tasks Aaron Bloomfield, Yu Deng, Jeff Wampler, Pascale Rondot, Dina Harth, Mary McManus, and Norman Badler, Proceedings of the IEEE Virtual Reality, Conference, 2003.
  • TRACE: Tactor Reach Access and Constraint Environment, Aaron Bloomfield and Norman Badler, In preparation for submission to the journal Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments.
  • Measuring Metamemory: Why Gamma Can't Tell Us What We Want to Know, Barbara A. Spellman, Aaron Blumenthal, Robert A. Bjork, Memory & Metamemory: Essays in Honor of Thomas O. Nelson. John Dunlosky & Robert A. Bjork (Eds.), American Psychological Association.
  • Collision Awareness Using Vibrotactile Arrays, Aaron Bloomfield and Norman Badler, in submission.