Mark Billinghurst

Mark Nathan Billinghurst is a professor in computer interface technologies. His work focuses on applications of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technology. Billinghurst has been a Fellow of the IEEE since 2023.

Education Billinghurst completed his school education at the New Plymouth Boys' High School. He received Bachelor of Computing and Mathematical Science (first class honors) and Master of Philosophy (Applied Mathematics & Physics) degrees in 1990 and 1992 respectively. Both degrees are from Waikato University. He received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington's Human Interface Technology Laboratory in 2002. His dissertation was Shared Space: Explorations in Collaborative Augmented Reality. Billinghurst's doctoral advisors were Linda Shapiro and Thomas A. Furness III. For his PhD course, Billinghurst created the Magic Book, a children's book animated through augmented reality produced by a head-mounted display. Billinghurst describes the Magic Book as technology "that allows you to overlay computer graphics onto the real world, in real time".

Career Billinghurst is professor of Human Computer Interaction at the University of South Australia (from 2015), In 2001, Billinghurst co-founded ARToolworks and helped to create ARToolKit, an open source AR development platform.

Awards and honors

2001 Discover Magazine Entertainment Award for the Magic Book technology.