Mixed Reality Laboratory

PhD Nottingham

Mark Paxton is an MEng graduate of Electronic and Computer Engineering from the University of Nottingham. After graduating he studied for a PhD at the MRL and was supervised by Prof. Steve Benford. He graduated in December 2010 and his thesis was titled Human-Sensor Dialogue in Participatory Sensing.

Mark continues his work with the MRL as Research Fellow, and has been involved with a range of projects, including SENSE (Schools E-science Network for the Study of the Environment), Equator, Participate and is part of the UbiComp Grand Challenge Community.  He is currently working on the Personal Inquiry project (PI) at the Learning Sciences Research Institute and the Horizon Digital Community History project.

Current Projects

• Personal Inquiry: Designing for Evidence-based Inquiry Learning across Formal and Informal Settings (October 2009 - September 2010)
• Horizon, Digital Community History: Designing mobile interfaces to present historic geographic data in the field. (April-September 2010)

Research Interests

Mark's research draws on his engineering background and the human-centred focus of the MRL, investigating the use of sensors within ubiquitous and pervasive computing environments. Much of his work has involved developing prototype sensor interfaces for young people in a educational setting (within schools and other environments). This has involved both technical work and more practical fieldwork, deploying and evaluating technology in the field in natural settings. His PhD work has concentrated on Participatory Sensing, particularly sensor networks that consist of a number of diverse sensors and multiple participants.

Publications, Conference Papers

Ella Tallyn, Danae Stanton, Steve Benford, Duncan Rowland, Dave Kirk, Mark Paxton, Hilary Smith, Sara Price, Geraldine Fitzpatrick and Rose Luckin, “Introducing eScience to the Classroom”. Proceedings of the UK e-Science All Hands Meeting, 31 Aug - 3 Sep 2004, Nottingham, UK. [International Conference Proceedings, 2004]

Stanton Fraser, D., Smith, H., Tallyn, E., Kirk, D., Benford, S., Rowland, D., Paxton, M., Price, S., and Fitzpatrick, G., “The SENSE project: a context-inclusive approach to studying environmental science within and across schools”. Accepted for proceedings of CSCL 2005, Taipei, Taiwan May 30 - June 4. [International Conference Proceedings, 2005]

Holger Schnädelbach, Boriana Koleva, Mark Paxton, Mike Twidale, Steve Benford, Rob Anastasi. The Augurscope: Refining its Design. Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments Jun 2006, Vol. 15, No. 3: 278-293.

Paxton, M. Chamberlain, A. and Benford, S., “Sensor-Based Systems for Environmental Education”. Accepted for Publication in The Workshop on ‘Emerging Technologies for Inquiry Based Learning in Science’, AIED 2007 Artificial Intelligence in Education, 2007.

Kanjo, E., Benford, S., Paxton, M., Chamberlain, A. et al., “MobGeoSen: Facilitating Personal GeoSensor Data Collection and Visualization using Mobile Phones”. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, ISSN 1617-4909 (Print) 1617-4917 (Online). Springer London.

Paxton, M., Benford, S., Oldroyd, A., Gower, A., Woolard, A., Tandavanitj, N., Stanton Fraser, D., Crellin, D. and Harper, R. "Participate: Producing A Mass Scale Environmental Campaign for Pervasive Technology." Workshop on Pervasive Persuasive Technology and Environmental Sustainability, Proceedings of 6th International Conference on Pervasive Computing, 2008.

Paxton, M. and Benford, S. 2009. Experiences of participatory sensing in the wild. In Proceedings of the 11th international Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (Orlando, Florida, USA, September 30 - October 03, 2009). Ubicomp '09. ACM, New York, NY, 265-274. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1620545.1620584

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