About

Timothy Wood is a distinguished professor at UC Santa Barbara in the Department of Media Arts and Technology. His research focuses on digital media, data visualization, computation, and interactive digital installations, with an emphasis on exploring new forms of visualizations through advanced visual language, image syntax, and semiotics. He directs the Experimental Visualization Lab, which investigates the impact of computation on visualization and artistic expression, contributing to the arts-engineering and scientific communities through innovative projects and courses. His work has been supported by notable organizations such as the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and his artistic contributions include permanent installations like 'Making Visible the Invisible' at the Seattle Public Library, which analyzes library data to map cultural trends over time.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer graphics (images)
• Multimedia
• Aesthetics
• Art
• Telecommunications
• Architectural engineering
• Visual arts
• Engineering
• Human–computer interaction
• Programming language

Selected publications

• Meditation experiences through a developmental lens: Does the “Stages of Insight”, a Buddhist model of meditative progression, apply to contemporary meditators?

  2025-05-27

  preprintOpen access

  Objective. Unwanted meditation-related experiences commonly occur and alternate with positive experiences over time. So far, effects have been studied as discrete events, creating difficulties to predict challenging experiences. We explored meditation experiences through a developmental lens, investigating whether a modern interpretation of the Stages of Insight (SoI), a Buddhist model of meditative progression, applies to contemporary meditators. Methods. We surveyed a nationally representative sample of 886 U.S. meditators on meditation-related experiences. Out of 103 survey items, those that captured SoI phenomenology were selected via inter-rater agreement. Endorsing 75% of stage-relevant items would classify a meditator as “reaching” that stage. We tested three hypotheses: (1) SoI-related item endorsement (signal) predicted number of stages more than endorsing more items in general (noise), (2) stages said to appear early in the process would be more frequently endorsed than those purported as later stages, and (3) there would be a positive association between the amount of meditation experience and being classified into later stages.Results. 39 items representing four (of a total 8) stages were included in the analysis; only stages 3, 4, 5, and 7 could be assessed. We found evidence for hypothesis 1, but not for hypotheses 2 and 3.Conclusions. This preliminary exploration found no clear evidence that the SoI model applies to contemporary meditators across contexts and traditions. Nevertheless, we show that traditional models can guide research, and that meditation-related experiences can be studied as developmental processes.

  PublisherDOI

• An Immersive Environment for Embodied Code

  CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts · 2022 · 3 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • Human–computer interaction

  The increasing sophistication and availability of Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR) technologies wield the potential to transform how we teach and learn computational concepts and coding. This project develops a platform for creative coding in virtual and augmented reality. The Embodied Coding Environment (ECE) is a flow-based visual coding system designed to increase physical engagement with programming and lower the barrier to entry for novice programmers. It is conceptualized as a merged digital/physical workspace where spatial representation of code, the visual outputs of the code, and user interactions and edit histories are co-located in a virtual 3D space.

  PublisherDOI

• Mediating Public Space: Art and Technology That Goes Beyond the Frame Art Gallery

  Leonardo · 2020

  • Computer Science
  • Visual arts
  • Art

  Algotecton (from algorithm and tecton-carpentry, articulation) is a site-specific generative sculpture inspired by the Weaire-Phelan structure, a mathematical construct that approximates the geometry of foam. It comprises 16 interlocking polyhedra fabricated using advanced parametric modeling and computer numerical control (CNC) technologies. Evocative of different natural formations-a crystalline structure, a kelp forest, a molecular compound-the sculpture responds to Kendall Buster's Parabiosis II piece at the street level of the Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. Algotecton harnesses state-of-theart computational design and fabrication techniques to give material expression to mathematical concepts, invite discovery and playfully transform people's perception of space and form.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• An Evaluation of the Scholarly Activity Guidance and Evaluative (SAGE) Program

  MedEdPublish · 2019-03-25

  articleOpen access

  <ns4:p>This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Objective: To evaluate the SAGE program five years following implementation. Methods: Our program evaluation was based on Guskey's five-level framework for evaluation of professional development. Residents and supervisors were invited to participate. Participants' reactions, learning, perceived organization support, use of new knowledge or skills and learning outcomes were examined through questionnaires and interviews. Results: 54% of residents and 65% supervisors were mostly or very satisfied with SAGE. 75% of residents felt there was moderate or great institutional support of resident research. Most residents and supervisors reported satisfaction with institutional research resources. Residents participating in the SAGE program reported a greater number of grant submissions and awards, but fewer conference presentations. Conclusions: SAGE has been well received by residents and supervisors. Findings suggest the program has fostered the development of research abilities and improved institutional support. It remains unclear if demonstrable learning outcomes have increased since program implementation. We also identified several barriers which will serve as targets for program improvement in future.</ns4:p>

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Improving Long-Horizon Forecasts with Expectation-Biased LSTM Networks

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2018-04-18 · 23 citations

  preprintOpen access

  State-of-the-art forecasting methods using Recurrent Neural Net- works (RNN) based on Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM) cells have shown exceptional performance targeting short-horizon forecasts, e.g given a set of predictor features, forecast a target value for the next few time steps in the future. However, in many applica- tions, the performance of these methods decays as the forecasting horizon extends beyond these few time steps. This paper aims to explore the challenges of long-horizon forecasting using LSTM networks. Here, we illustrate the long-horizon forecasting problem in datasets from neuroscience and energy supply management. We then propose expectation-biasing, an approach motivated by the literature of Dynamic Belief Networks, as a solution to improve long-horizon forecasting using LSTMs. We propose two LSTM ar- chitectures along with two methods for expectation biasing that significantly outperforms standard practice.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• PROBABLY/POSSIBLY?

  2017-10-19 · 1 citations

  article

  This research project is based on 32 years of Kuchera-Morin's research and practice in spatio-temporal music composition and media arts. The project is an immersive interactive visual, sonic computational instrument presented as an installation, which includes the development of an open-source computational language, and Kuchera-Morin's immersive interactive visual/sonic composition PROBABLY/POSSIBLY? Using the mathematics of quantum mechanics, the immersive instrument and computational language facilitates the creation of new, unique visual/sonic art forms. This project allows the artist to drive scientific and technological research for creative expression. This same technology is giving physicists insight into higher dimensional representation. The immersive visual/sonic instrument and language is based on the time-dependent Schrödinger equation splitting a hydrogen-like atom's electron in superposition in various orbitals. The immersive media composition, PROBABLY/POSSIBLY? can be interactively performed using our multimodal computational platform and open source language. The instrument/installation can also be used to compose and perform a number of art works based on the time-dependent Schrödinger equation

  PublisherDOI

• Modular verification of equivalence for memory allocating procedures

  Spiral (Imperial College London) · 2016-10-01

  dissertationOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Verifying the equivalence of programs has been applied in many situations: for example, proving the correctness of bug-fixes, refactorings, compilation, and optimisation, proving program continuity, proving non-interference in secure information flow, proving abstraction and refinement relationships between programs, and proving that programs conform to differential privacy policies. Verifying the equivalence of heap manipulating procedures where the order and amount of memory allocations differ is challenging for state-of-the-art equivalence verifiers. We describe a fully automatic program equivalence tool, and propose a verification methodology, for such dynamically allocating programs. Recent years have seen significant progress toward fully automatic program equivalence verification, with the release of several tools taking a variety of approaches. Two main approaches are to use a weakest-precondition based program verifier or a bounded model checker. One such tool has built in support for programs that differ in the order of memory allocation, it uses a bounded model checker to discharge some proof obligations and restricts the allowable shapes of heap data structures to trees. We describe a fully automatic program equivalence verification tool for a simple object oriented language. It has a notion of procedure equivalence that is powerful enough to allow procedures with different orders and amounts of memory allocation or garbage creation to be considered equivalent, with no restrictions on heap shapes. Our tool establishes equivalence by verifying that procedures result in isomorphic heaps. The tool is built on top of an off-the-shelf weakest-precondition based verifier which itself uses an SMT solver to discharge proof obligations. A naive encoding of procedure equivalence would require the verification tool to produce a witness to the heap isomorphism before and after procedure calls, which SMT based tools are not very good at. Instead we propose a modular verification methodology, called RIE, that allows us to soundly establish heap isomorphism by checking that an approximation preserves heap equality. RIE then allows us to assume that: whenever we can establish an isomorphism between parts of stores that these stores are in fact equal, and that whenever equivalent procedures are called in an isomorphic manner their effects are equal. RIE also allows our tool to handle some cases where there is not a simulation between the recursive procedure calls of the programs being compared. We prove, and provide intuitions, that RIE is sound for a simple programming language that includes non-deterministic allocation, unbounded recursion, and unbounded heap updates.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Ensemble Feedback Instruments

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2015-06-01 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access

  We document results from exploring ensemble feedback in loosely-structured electroacoustic improvisations. A conceptual justification for the explorations is provided, in addition to discussion of tools and methodologies. Physical configurations of intra-ensemble feedback networks are documented, along with qualitative analysis of their effectiveness.

  PublisherDOI

• Cleaning, sanitization, and qualification of disinfectant efficacy for cell therapies

  Cytotherapy · 2015-04-27

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Mixed reality simulation with physical mobile display devices

  2015-03-01 · 9 citations

  article

  This paper presents the design and implementation of a system for simulating mixed reality in setups combining mobile devices and large backdrop displays. With a mixed reality simulator, one can perform usability studies and evaluate mixed reality systems while minimizing confounding variables. This paper describes how mobile device AR design factors can be flexibly and systematically explored without sacrificing the touch and direct unobstructed manipulation of a physical personal MR display. First, we describe general principles to consider when implementing a mixed reality simulator, enumerating design factors. Then, we present our implementation which utilizes personal mobile display devices in conjunction with a large surround-view display environment. Standing in the center of the display, a user may direct a mobile device, such as a tablet or head-mounted display, to a portion of the scene, which affords them a potentially annotated view of the area of interest. The user may employ gesture or touch screen interaction on a simulated augmented camera feed, as they typically would in video-see-through mixed reality applications. We present calibration and system performance results and illustrate our system's flexibility by presenting the design of three usability evaluation scenarios.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Hannah E. Wolfe

  Colby College

  3 shared

• Gustavo Rincon

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  2 shared

• Andrés Cabrera

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  2 shared

• JoAnn Kuchera-Morin

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  2 shared

• Matthew Wright

  Rochester Institute of Technology

  2 shared

• Kon Hyong Kim

  University of California System

  2 shared

• Charlie Roberts

  2 shared

• Amy Eguchi

  University of California, San Diego

  2 shared

Labs

• Timothy Wood's LabPI

  Not provided

Awards & honors

• John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in Visual Arts (2016)
• Making Visible the Invisible (permanent installation at Seat…
• Creative Capital Foundation support
• Daniel Langlois Foundation for the Arts, Science and Technol…
• Canada Council for the Arts support