Company

Attentive Displays is a leading provider of consultancy and software development services in the field of attentive displays, eye-tracking based systems and data and information visualisation solutions.

Attentive Displays is a privately owned company. It has offices in the UK and USA and a research and software development lab based in Sofia, Bulgaria. The company has an outstanding team of advisers and consultants and a network of partners from around the world.

Team

Dr Stavri Nikolov, Founder, Managing Director and Head of Research

Dr Stavri Nikolov is a Founder of Attentive Displays Ltd and its Managing Director and Head of Research. Prior to founding Attentive Displays Ltd, from 1998 until 2007, Dr Nikolov was a Research Fellow/Senior Research Fellow in Image Processing at the University of Bristol, UK. His research interests over the years have spanned several areas including image analysis, image fusion, computer graphics, new methods for data visualisation and navigation, the use of gaze-tracking and VR in 2-D and 3-D image analysis and understanding, and the construction of attentive and interactive information displays. In the last 15 years he has participated in many international and national research projects in Austria, Portugal, Bulgaria and the UK, in image processing, analytical data processing, medical imaging, image fusion, and gaze-contingent data visualisation and analysis. He has published more than 60 refereed or invited papers, including eight invited book chapters, and also numerous technical reports in these areas. He has also given many invited lectures around the world on image processing, image fusion and information visualisation. Dr Nikolov has undertaken consultancies for a number of major European companies and has taken part in the development of various software systems. He is the creator and co-ordinator of The Online Resource for Research in Image Fusion (www.imagefusion.org) and The Online Archive of Scanpath Data (www.scanpaths.org), together with Dr Jeff Pelz from RIT, USA. Dr Nikolov is a member of the British Machine Vision Association, the Applied Vision Association, the International Society of Information Fusion, ACM SIGGRAPH and IEEE.

Mr Boris Menkov, Founder and Interactive Media Director

Mr Boris Menkov is a Founder of Attentive Displays Ltd and its Interactive Media Director. He is also the Managing Partner of Rapan LLC, a computer animation studio in the USA providing creative content for the Entertainment Industry and the Web. An architect by trade, Mr Menkov has worked in the field of interactive media for the past ten years. More information about his current work can be found at (www.rapan.com). Prior to founding Rapan, Mr Menkov has worked for Instill Corporation as a manager of UI Design and Usability and Sony Interactive (Psygnosis Division) as an Art Director. Mr Menkov holds a MArch from Miami University and a BA from Williams College, USA.

Dr Paul Masri, Sales Director and Consultant

Paul Masri received his BEng in Electronic Engineering (University of Bristol, UK) in 1991. His PhD entitled “Computer Modelling of Sound for Transformation and Synthesis of Musical Signals” was awarded in 1997 by University of Bristol. In 2000, he co-created (with Joel Laird) a permanent, interactive exhibit at the London Science Museum demonstrating physical modelling of drums. His research interests are interactive devices and systems for the creative arts. In 2001 he established a web development company (www.worldwithoutwalls.co.uk) that aspires to push the boundaries of what can be achieved for business online. Dr Masri is technology consultant to Attentive Displays Ltd in the areas of digital audio and sound. Outside of work he can often be found on the salsa dance floors of Bristol.

Mr Alexander Gerganov, Retail Analytics and Smart Sensors Specialist

Mr Alexander Gerganov graduated Computer Systems and Technologies in the Technical University of Sofia. His Master's is in Cognitive Science (neural networks modeling of perceptual learning). He has worked in different scientific projects involving connectionist modelling, eye tracking, perceptual learning psycholinguistics, the study of perception and dyslexia.

Mr Vladin Mitov, Interactive Interfaces Designer

Mr Vladin Mitov is a multimedia designer who lives and works in Sofia, Bulgaria. He graduated Sofia Art College in classical animation. In the early 90s he was involved in many TV productions creating multimedia and animations on an Amiga Commodore using Scala MM 200, Deluxe Paint, Brilliance and Imagine. In the late 90s he founded Electric Dog (www.ed-multimedia.com) – a studio for computer game multimedia and animation. Electric Dog has successfully taken part in the development of many games and multimedia projects for Hasbro Interactive, Mattel Interactive, Gateway Learning Corporation, Atari, THQ, Infogrames and Nickelodeon. More information about these projects could be found at www.ed-multimedia.com. Since 2005 Vladin works as a graphic and usability designer. Vladin is Attentive Display's Interactive Interfaces Designer.

Advisers/Consultants

Prof Tom Troscianko, Consultant

Prof Tom Troscianko is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Bristol, UK, and Director of the Cognition and Information Technology Research Centre (COGNIT) at Bristol. He is also technology consultant to Attentive Displays Ltd in the areas of visual perception, cognition and action. Prof Troscianko started his career as a lab technician in the British Steel Corporation (1970-71), analysing data on the effects of friction in steel rolling mills. He then studied for a degree in physics at Manchester University (1971-1974) after which he became a Research Scientist at Kodak Ltd in London, where he got interested in colour vision. He transferred his work to The City University, London, where he did a PhD in Optometry and Visual Science (1975-78). The he went to Bristol University in late 1978 to work on hearing and vision with Richard Gregory. In 1985 he went to the University of Tübingen Eye Hospital, with a Fellowship from the Humboldt Foundation. His work was mainly on “isoluminance” and its effects on the perception of form and motion. He returned to the UK for a part-time post-doc appointment in the Department of Psychology at Bristol; for the rest of the time he worked at the IBM UK Scientific Centre in Winchester, where he became interested in computational modelling of vision. He then returned full-time to Bristol in 1988, where he organised the European Conference on Visual Perception. He became a Lecturer in 1991. In 2000 he left Bristol to take up a post of Professor of Psychology at the University of Sussex. In 2002 he returned to Bristol, also as Professor of Psychology, and founded the Cognition and Information Technology Research Centre (COGNIT) whose aims, like his, are to foster an inter-disciplinary approach to what has become known as “cognitive neuroscience”. You can find out more about Prof Tom Troscianko here.

Dr Iain Gilchrist, Consultant

Iain took his first degree in Psychology (BSc) at the University of Durham (1989-1992) and then studied for a PhD at the University of Birmingham (1992-1995). He then worked as a Research Associate at the University of Durham (1995-1998). He joined the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol as Lecturer in Neuropsychology in 1998 and became Reader in Neuropsychology in 2002. He is currently Head of the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol. He is an Honorary Neuropsychologist in North Bristol NHS Trust; A member of: The Applied Vision Association; The Experimental Psychology Society; The British Ocular Motor Group and an Associate Member, Centre for Vision and Visual Cognition, University of Durham. Iain's research is concerned with the link between vision and action. Vision provides information so that we can interact with the world. These interactions involve motor systems such as eye, arm, head, and whole body movements. One major focus of this work has been to understand how and why we move our eyes. Eye movements are interesting because the movement itself radically changes the nature of the visual input. He and colleagues have also been looking at other visually guided actions such as drawing, copying and foraging. He is also technology consultant to Attentive Displays Ltd in the areas of eye tracking and active vision. You can find out more information about Dr Iain Gilchrist here.

Dr Jian Li, Consultant

Jian was born in Beijing, China. He received a B.Eng degree in automatic control from Harbin Engineering University, China, in 2002, and an MSc degree in control systems from Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of London, in 2003. From March 2004 until March 2008, he worked on his PhD project under supervision of Dr. Chris Benton, Dr. Stavri Nikolov and Dr. Nick Scott-Samuel from the Department of Experimental Psychology and Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at University of Bristol. Funded by UK MoD Defence Technology Centre, his PhD project explored methods of extracting and fusing pixel-level motion information from multi-spectrum surveillance videos. Besides theoretical work, he was also involved in the Eden-Project Data Gathering exercise in 2005 organised by University of Bristol and Waterfall Solutions Ltd, and led the development of the Video Fusion Toolbox (VFT) used to perform real-time spatial or spatio-temporal fusion of multi-spectral videos. Currently Dr Li is working on the BEWARE project with Prof. Shaogang Gong and Dr. Tao Xiang in the Department of Computer Science, Queen Mary, University of London. He is a technology consultant to Attentive Displays Ltd in the area of real-time motion estimation and motion-based HCI. You can find out more about Dr Li here.

PARTNERS

Research
Univesity of Bristol, UK
Leeds University, UK
Griffith University, Australia
New Bulgarian University, Bulgaria

Software Development
Sirma Group, Bulgaria

Hardware
Bios

Content and Web Design
Rapan, USA
World Without Walls, UK
Ablen, Bulgaria
Electric Dog
Chaos Group

Usability Studies
HiLab Usability Lab, Bulgaria
SRLabs, Italy

Gaze Tracking
Smart Eye, Sweden