Biography - Tom Calvert

Tom Calvert was raised in the United Kingdom where much of his youth was misspent building radio sets, although this did serve to motivate him to obtain an electrical engineering degree from University College London in 1957. In 1960, he immigrated to Canada to join Canadair Ltd. in Montreal. Driven by curiosity about the fast-evolving digital technologies, he then enrolled in a master’s program in electrical engineering at Wayne State University in Detroit. He went on to complete his Ph.D. at Carnegie-Mellon University in 1967, and then taught there for five years, serving as chair of the biomedical engineering program.

In 1972, Dr. Calvert’s interest in biomedical engineering led him to a position in kinesiology (and later computing science) at Simon Fraser University. Tom Calvert is a Professor and Director, Information Technology and Interactive Arts Program, Simon Fraser University. His teaching and research have been at the interfaces between engineering, computing science, and human performance. As a result of working with choreographers, he developed software to create human figure animation from dance notation. This led to the development in 1990 of Life Forms, a software system for choreographers and animators. Life Forms continues to be developed and marketed by Credo Interactive, Inc., a Vancouver company of which Dr. Calvert is founder and board chair.

Dr. Calvert’s other activities at Simon Fraser University included serving as Dean of Interdisciplinary Studies for eight years, Vice-president for Research and Information Systems for five years, and leader of the initiative to develop the new School of Engineering Science. In the early 1990s, he collaborated with SFU colleague Linda Harasim to develop tools to support online learning. One result of this collaboration was the Virtual-U course management system. Working with other researchers across Canada, Harasim and Calvert were leaders in establishing the TeleLearning Network of Centres of Excellence in 1995.

In 1997, Dr. Calvert joined the new Technical University of BC as a professor and Vice-president for Research and External Affairs. At TechBC he continued to lead research projects on virtual learning environments and on the visualization of choreography and dance notation. He returned to SFU when it absorbed TechBC in 2002. Dr. Calvert is a registered professional engineer in British Columbia, a member of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering.