Julian Lombardi
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2008-07-13T21:14:23Z
Mdd
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/* The Bone Box */
{{Infobox Scientist
|image = Julian_Lombardi_in_2008.jpg <!-- only free-content images are allowed for depicting living people - see [[WP:NONFREE]] -->
|image_width = 150px |
| name = Julian Lombardi
| birth_date = {{birth date and age|1956|11|11}}
| birth_place = [[United States|U.S.]]
| nationality = {{USA}}
| field = [[Computer science]], [[Biology]]
| work_institution = [[Duke University]]
| known_for = [[ViOS]], [[Croquet Project]]}}
'''Julian Lombardi''' (born [[Nov 11]], [[1956]]) is an [[United States|American]] [[inventor]], [[author]], [[educator]], and [[computer scientist]] known for his work with socio-computational systems, scalable [[virtual world]] technologies, and in the design and deployment of deeply collaborative [[virtual learning environment]]s.
== Biography ==
Lombardi was born to a concert pianist and an Italian actress living in [[New York City]]. His family soon moved back to [[Rome, Italy]] where he lived until the age of six. He went on to attend [[Buckley Country Day School]] and public schools in Great Neck, New York and elsewhere on Long Island. In 1974 Lombardi began his [[undergraduate]] studies at Dowling College and graduated cum laude in the [[Biology]] major and [[Physics]] minor in 1977. He attended Graduate School at [[Clemson University]] where he received his MA in 1980 and was granted a PhD in [[Zoology]] in 1983.
Upon graduation, Lombardi accepted a postdoctoral appointment and lectureship in the biological sciences at The [[University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill|University of North Carolina]] which he held until 1986. In 1986, Lombardi was appointed an Assistant Professor of Biology at [[The University of North Carolina at Greensboro]]. In 1990, he received tenure and was named Director of Graduate Studies in Biology. He served on the faculty at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro until 1999. Currently Lombardi is an Assistant Vice President with [[Duke University]]'s Office of Information Technology. He is also a Senior Research Scholar with Duke University's program in Information Science + Information Studies<ref>[http://www.isis.duke.edu/ Information Science + Information Studies]</ref>, an adjunct professor with Duke University's Department of Computer Science.
Lombardi also served as Director of the University's [[scientific visualization|Analytical Visualization]] Center from 1993-1999. From 2002-2005, Lombardi managed a research and development group a the [[University of Wisconsin-Madison]] that specialized in the design and development of open source virtual learning environments and [[digital media]] technologies for learning and instruction.
== Work ==
Lombardi's research program centered on the [[evolution]] of [[complexity|complex]] organismal function in [[vertebrates]] and the evolution of maternal-embryonic physiological relationships. An advocate of the use of imaging technologies and [[early adopter]] of [[information technology]] in university teaching and learning, in 1987 Lombardi began writing [[HyperTalk]]-based [[software application]]s in support of learning and instruction in anatomy and physiology.
In the mid-1990s, Lombardi combined his interests in information technology, complex systems, and the phenomenon of [[emergence]] in [[biological process|biological systems]] to begin designing and developing [[computer-supported collaboration]] systems involving self-optimizing massively multiuser online [[3D computer graphics|3D]] environments.
=== The Bone Box ===
In 1989 he developed and marketed ''The Bone Box''<ref>[http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0033-5770(199112)66%3A4%3C539%3ATBBV1%3E2.0.CO%3B2-M ''The Bone Box'']</ref>, a commercial 3D auto-tutorial program for use in learning human skeletal anatomy with the early Macintosh computer.
=== Vios ===
Lombardi eventually founded [[ViOS|ViOS, Inc.]] where, during the period from 1999-2001, he served as the [[venture capital]]-backed [[company]]'s first [[CEO]] and then Chief Creative Officer/[[Software architect]]. There, he designed and implemented ''[[ViOS]]'', a [[client-server]] technology that enabled the first [[3D computer graphics|3D]] [[user interface]] to network deliverable resources (including the [[Internet]]) in the form of a highly customizable and massively multi-user online environment - essentially a very large scale [[social software]] system/[[3D computer graphics|3D]] [[wiki]].
=== Croquet Project ===
Lombari is one of the six principal [[software architecture|architects]] of the [[Croquet Project]], along with [[Alan Kay]], [[David P. Reed]], Andreas Raab, [[David A. Smith]], and [[Mark McCahill]]. Lombardi also serves as Executive Director of the Croquet Consortium<ref>[http://croquetconsortium.org Croquet Consortium]</ref>, a not-for-profit organization to promote the continued development and adoption of ''Croquet'', an open source software platform for creating deeply collaborative multi-user online simulations.
== Publocations ==
Books:
* 1998. ''Comparative Vertebrate Reproduction''. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston Mass.
Selected papers and articles
* 2004. "Design for an extensible Croquet-based framework to deliver a persistent, unified, massively multi-user, and self-organizing virtual environment". With [[Mark P. McCahill]]. In: ''Proceedings of the Second Annual Conference on Creating, Connecting, and Collaborating through Computing''. Edited by Y. Kambayashi, K. Tanaka, and K. Rose.
* 2005. "Annotation authoring in 3D collaborative virtual environments". With others. In: ''15th International Conference on Artificial Reality and Telexistence (ICAT 2005)''.
* 2006. "3D model annotation from multiple viewpoints for Croquet". With others. In: ''Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Conference on Creating, Connecting, and Collaborating through Computing'', Edited by K. Tanaka, and K. Rose. IEEE.
Patents:
* Lombardi, J. 1999. {{US patent|5889951}} — ''Systems, methods, and computer program products for accessing, leasing, relocating, constructing and modifying internet sites within a multi-dimensional virtual reality environment''
== References ==
{{reflist}}
== External links ==
* [http://croquetconsortium.org Croquet Consortium website]
* [http://jlombardi.blogspot.com/ Julian Lombardi's Blog]
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bq_1NW6cNYY A video tour of ViOS]
* [http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/l/Lombardi:Julian.html DBLP bibliography] entries for Julian Lombardi
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lombardi, Julian}}
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:1956 births]]
[[Category:American businesspeople]]
[[Category:American computer scientists]]
[[Category:American educators]]
[[Category:American inventors]]
[[Category:American technology writers]]
[[Category:Duke University faculty]]
[[Category:Human-computer interaction researchers]]