Steve Mann, PhD (MIT '97), P. Eng. (Professional Engineers Ontario), is a tenured prof. at University of Toronto, Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, with cross-appointments in Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Faculty of Forestry, and is General Chair, IEEE ISTAS, and Associate Editor IEEE T&S. He is regarded by many as a modern-day Leonardo daVinci:

“Steve Mann has been likened to artist, scientist, and inventor Leonardo da Vinci, .... He creates overlapping and inextricably intertwined syntheses of interventions and inventions that combine design, art, science, technology, engineering, and the environment....”

-- Ariel Garten, CEO, InteraXon

“In Professor Steve Mann -- inventor, physicist, engineer, mathematician, scientist, designer, developer, project director, filmmaker, artist, instrumentalist, author, photographer, actor, activist -- we see so much of the paradigmatic classical Greek philosopher. ... Steve has always been preoccupied by the application of his ideas into form. In this way too, he can be considered a modern day Leonardo Da Vinci.”

-- K. Michael, Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Technology and Society

[Chapter 23.10, Commentary, Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction The Interaction Design Foundation, 2012]

Mann also won the 2004 Leonardo Award for Excellence, and gave the headline Keynote at the eLeonardo Symposium.

35 years ago he invented the Digital Eye Glass and is the inventor of the MannGlassTM HDR welding glass, the EyeTap Glass (http://wearcam.org/glass.pdf), and has been recognized as "the father of the wearable computer" (IEEE ISSCC2000). Mann founded the MIT Wearable Computing Project and was its first member (http://www.glogger.mobi/v/75560). He is currently Chief Scientist of Meta-View, makers of Spaceglasses (http://spaceglasses.com).

Mann is also the inventor of HDR (High Dynamic Range) Imaging (United States Patent 5828793). In this regard, Robertson etal write: "The first report of digitally combining multiple pictures of the same scene to improve dynamic range appears to be Mann." in "Estimation-theoretic approach to dynamic range enhancement using multiple exposures", JEI 12(2), p220, right column, line 26.

He is a sculptor, artist, and inventor of the hydraulophone, the world's first musical instrument to make sounds from vibrations in liquid itself (won first place in the Coram International Sustainable Design Award; installed as public sculptures art around the world). He has been featured by news organizations including AP News, New York Times, LA-Times, Time, Newsweek, Fortune, WiReD, NBC, ABC, CNN, David Letterman (#6 on Letterman's Top Ten), CBC-TV, CBS, Scientific American, Scientific American Frontiers, Discovery Channel, Byte, Reuters, New Scientist, Rolling Stone, and BBC. His award winning documentary cyborglog ShootingBack, and the ideas from recent book "CYBORG: Digital Destiny and Human Possibility in the Age of the Wearable Computer" (Randomhouse Doubleday, 2001) inspired a 35mm feature length motion picture film about his life (http://wearcam.org/cyberman.htm), said, by P.O.V., to be Canada's most important film of the year. Mann and his students Chris Aimone and James Fung were founding members of InteraXon, a Canadian company commercializing cyborg technology developed by Mann and his students. InteraXon created a large-scale public art installation open to the public as the flagship project of the Ontario Pavillion during the entire time of the Olympics from February 12-28, 2010.

Mann coined the term "Tree-Shaped Designers" to describe people who are simultaneously broad (rhizomic) and deep(ly rooted) in numerous areas of research, philosophy, and praxis, unlike "T-shaped" people who are broad with depth in only one area.. He strives to attain "tree-shaped" skills.