Masters Project: "WorkTop: A Multi-touch Tabletop Sketching Application for Interdisciplinary Design Collaboration". Committee: Dr. Ali Mazalek, Dr. Michael Nitsche, and Dr. Jon Sanford. Researched and developed tabletop and other tangible interfaces for collaborative work, games, interactive narrative control, and cognitive science research.
Honors: President’s Undergraduate Research Award Grant, Deans List. Coursework: Java Programming, Circuits and Electronics, Human Integrated Systems, Simulations, Databases, Probability and Statistics, Stochastic Methods, Queuing Theory, and Optimization.
Designed interactions and led a team to develop a gesture based interactive narrative project based in the universe of the TV show Supernatural using Microsoft Kinect and video to create an experience that invokes a sense of dramatic agency within the context of a persistent moving narrative. Project sponsored by Intel.
Researched, designed, and developed a multi-touch table top sketching application for interdisciplinary design collaboration. Conducted iterative user evaluations with paper-based and digital prototypes to establish the final design.
Designed and developed iPhone based interactive narrative remote control. Debugged and streamlined JavaScript for social viewing set-top box applications.
Designed, built, and troubleshot a puppet interface for mapping body motions onto a 3D virtual character in real time using Arduino, Bluetooth, and Processing. Conducted cognitive science experiments to determine the puppets ability to enhance identification with a virtual character.
Wrote and taught classes on electronics and physical fabrication. Helped students design and develop interactive play spaces for outdoor installation.
Designed and created websites and Flash applications. Developed interactive AJAX applications. Designed and built a puppet like interface for controlling a 3D avatar in real time using Arduino and Processing. Created a 3D environment using Maya and Unreal. Developed a deep understanding of digital media and its affordances.
Used software including Microsoft Word, Adobe FrameMaker, Robohelp, Visio, Adobe Illustrator and Corel Draw to produce professional quality manuals, requirements specifications, and online help guides for the credit card processing industry.
Developed VBA Macros for MS Excel to streamline the customs invoicing process. Researched, reported on and negotiated contract manufacturing terms. Managed inventory using SAP. Wrote and compiled a training manual for common SAP tasks.
Edited and published a collection of short fiction. Designed the layout and cover using Adobe InDesign and contracted and worked with printer concerning price and quality issues.
Worked with a team to analyze and improve the animal adoption process. Delivered written and oral reports to technical and non-technical audiences. Developed and administered customer surveys. Reduced customer wait time by 66% and increased adoptions by as many as 200 per year.
Hosted and produced a monthly show on WREK radio consisting of author interviews, reviews, and critical analysis of science fiction. Gained recording and audio production, as well as leadership and organization skills. Researched and wrote criticism of examples of engineering in utopian science fiction.
Paul Clifton, Ali Mazalek, Jon Sanford, Claudia Rébola, Seunghyun Lee, and Natasha Powell. 2010. SketchTop: design collaboration on a multi-touch tabletop. In Proceedings of the fifth international conference on Tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction (TEI '11). ACM, New York, NY, USA,333-336.
Paul G. Clifton. 2010. Spatial relationships: a framework for understanding the relationships between real and virtual spaces. In Proceedings of the fifth international conference on Tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction (TEI '11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 433-434.
Ali Mazalek, Sanjay Chandrasekharan, Michael Nitsche, Tim Welsh, Paul Clifton, Andrew Quitmeyer, Firaz Peer, Friedrich Kirschner, and Dilip Athreya. 2010. I'm in the game: embodied puppet interface improves avatar control. In Proceedings of the fifth international conference on Tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction (TEI '11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 129-136.
Ali Mazalek, Michael Nitsche, Sanjay Chandrasekharan, Tim Welsh, Paul Clifton, Andrew Quitmeyer, Firaz Peer, and Friedrich Kirschner. 2010. Recognizing self in puppet controlled virtual avatars. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Fun and Games (Fun and Games '10). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 66-73.
Mazalek, A., Chandrasekharan, S., Nitsche, M., Welsh, T., Thomas, G., Sanka, T., and Clifton, P. 2009. Giving your self to the game: transferring a player's own movements to avatars using tangible interfaces. In Proceedings of the 2009 ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Video Games (New Orleans, Louisiana, August 04 - 06, 2009). S. N. Spencer, Ed. Sandbox '09. ACM, New York, NY, 161-168.
“I Vant to Vleed My Vlood.” Monstrous Bodies: Celebrating 25 Years of the Fantastic in the Arts at Georgia Tech. Ed. Paul Clifton. Atlanta: Georgia Tech School of Literature Communication and Culture, 2006. 41-53.
“Busted Up.” North Avenue Review Winter 2003: 31-3.