Biography chalmers

Alan Chalmers has been a visiting scholar at the Flinders University Philosophy Department since 1999. For the 2007 fall semester he will be a visiting professor at theUniversity of Pittsburgh. He was born in Bristol, England in 1939, and attained a BSc in physics at the University of Bristol, and his MSc in physics from theUniversity of Manchester. His PhD on the electromagnetic theory of J.C. Maxwell was granted by the University of London. Chalmers came to Australia in 1971 and worked for someyears at the University of Sydney.[1]
Chalmers was elected a fellow of the Academy of Humanities in 1997. His primary research interest is the philosophy of science andhe is author of the best-selling textbook What Is This Thing Called Science? which has been translated into many languages
His recent work has focused on the real-timesynthesis of high-fidelity images. This research has incorporated psychophysical experiments to quantify the perception of objects in the real-world and the same objectsin the virtual reconstruction of the real scene. He has been working with experts from other disciplines for many years to develop computer-based approaches to enablethe investigation of complex hypotheses concerning, for example the archaeological record, or architectural design, in safe, non-destructive and controlled environments.Alan is also currently developing Real Virtuality: true multi-sensory high-fidelity virtual environments in which all five senses (visuals, audio, feel, smell andtaste) are stimulated in a physically accurate manner to give a user the same perceptual experience as if he/she was actually "there" in the real scene being depicted.