FORUM Obituary Randy Pausch (1960–2008)

In the introduction to his book, The Last Lecture, advisor Andy van Dam, a caring educator and world Randy Pausch wrote, “engineering isn’t about perfect renowned leader in interactive computer graphics. Rec- solutions, it’s about doing the best you can with limited ognizing in Pausch the promise of a gifted teacher, resources” (Pausch & Zaslow, 2008). Working in the van Dam steered him toward an academic career. field of interactive computer graphics, Pausch applied Pausch attended graduate school at Carnegie Mellon this engineering principle to the building of computer University, earning his Ph.D. degree in 1988. interfaces that were elegant, intuitive, and accessible to Pausch was hired as an assistant professor of computer Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/pvar/article-pdf/18/1/92/1624890/pres.18.1.92.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 large numbers of people, including those with limited science by the in 1988, where he skills and limited means. Pausch loved technology, not was promoted to associate professor in 1993 and re- for itself, but for what it allowed him and others to do. mained until 1997. One of his first efforts at Virginia Employing today’s technologies, people can fly, lift was the development of the Simple Tool- great weights, see distant planets, talk to people around kit, SUIT (Pausch, Conway, & Deline, 1992). This the world, and explore virtual worlds that afford tele- toolkit exemplified Pausch’s desire to make graphical portation, time travel, and magic carpet rides. It is to programming easier by accommodating tools to the these latter possibilities—building virtual worlds that demands of the problem and the skills and intuitions of evoke experiences achievable by no other means—that the user. Pausch’s first venture into virtual reality, VR, Pausch devoted his academic life. He also held as a goal resulted in a highly influential paper, “Virtual Reality on that these experiences should have value; they should be Five Dollars a Day” (Pausch, 1991). In this paper, he useful and/or fun. demonstrated that a useable, head-mounted, head- Pausch was born in 1960 to Virginia and Fred tracked, VR system could be built for about $5,000, Pausch. Speaking of his upbringing by them, Pausch which was about two orders of magnitude less expensive would often say that he had won the parents lottery. than the state-of-the-art systems that were available at During his childhood, Pausch saw engineering hold this time. Consistent with his views about engineering, center stage in a world entrenched in a cold war. He “VR on $5/day” was far from a perfect solution, but was a child of the “space race,” which began when the for many applications, this inexpensive system sufficed Soviet Union launched the world’s first satellite in for the purposes at hand and allowed entry into VR re- 1957. During Pausch’s childhood, Americans were put- search for a host of new and eager scientists. ting considerable effort, resources, and pride into re- During this time at Virginia, Pausch and I formed a gaining their leadership in science and technology. close and lasting collaboration, for which I am exceed- Pausch wrote, “Men first walked on the moon during ingly grateful. We worked together using VR as a means the summer of 1969, when I was eight years old. I knew to study our complementary interests in human visual then that pretty much anything was possible. It was as if perception. As a visual scientist, my concern was to ex- all of us, all over the world, had been given permission ploit the medium’s potential to provide controllable, to dream big dreams” (Pausch & Zaslow, 2008). Pausch took his dreams to , where he earned a B.S. degree in computer science in 1982. Dennis R. Proffitt There he also won the mentor lottery by having as his Psychology Department University of Virginia Presence,. Vol. 18, No. 1, February 2009, 92–95 Charlottesville, VA 22904 © 2009 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [email protected]

92 PRESENCE: VOLUME 18, NUMBER 1 Proffitt 93

immersive contexts in which to study human percep- Pausch that with sufficient modification Alice could be- tion. Pausch’s interest was in providing the tools to come a teaching tool. Sparked by Wanda Dann and make this possible and in assessing the degree to which Steve Cooper’s use of Alice to teach introductory pro- VR evoked real-world perceptions. A question that gramming, Pausch worked to make Alice an engaging haunted VR at that time, and continues to do so today, teaching environment in which novice programmers was “What does it mean to be immersed in a virtual en- could learn to program. With Dann and Cooper, vironment (VE)?” “What does presence mean?” Pausch Pausch wrote a textbook, Learning to Program with Al- had little patience in debating these questions and in- ice (Dann, Cooper, & Pausch, 2003), that is currently stead sought to operationalize, quantify, and test the in use in hundreds of colleges and universities and over assertions that underlay these debates (Pausch, Proffitt, 100 high schools and middle schools (Kelleher et al.,

& Williams, 1997). In other studies, we directly com- 2008). A formal evaluation showed that taking an initial Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/pvar/article-pdf/18/1/92/1624890/pres.18.1.92.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 pared spatial perceptions of VEs with those obtained programming course using Alice improved grades in when viewing comparable real-world environments subsequent or concurrent introductory computer sci- (Gossweiler, Proffitt, Bhalla, & Pausch, 1995). A good ence courses and greatly increased the likelihood that example of Pausch’s work at this time can be found in a students would become computer science majors (Kelle- multidisciplinary collaboration that he and Ken Hinck- her et al.). A new version of Alice, Storytelling Alice, ley formed to build a neurosurgery planning worksta- was developed by Pausch’s final Ph.D. student Caitlin tion (Hinckley, Pausch, Proffitt, & Kassell, 1998). Kelleher with the aim of engaging middle school-aged When Pausch and Hinckley asked a senior neurosur- girls in programming—making programming not just geon, Neil Kassell, what he would like when planning easy, but also fun. The initial evaluations of Storytelling neurosurgery, Kassell replied that he would like to be Alice showed that girls freely chose to spend more time able to hold the brain in his hand and manipulate its programming with it than with the generic Alice pro- orientation. A virtual version of Kassell’s vision was real- gram (Kelleher, Pausch, & Kiesler, 2007). Following a ized by placing a VR tracker into the detached head of a sabbatical at , Pausch gained permission toy baby doll and yoking the toy head’s manipulated to use the characters from The Sims 2 in the latest ver- movements to the displayed orientation of a 3D brain sion of Alice. This new addition will help realize image. Pausch’s twin goals of (1) making learning to program For good reasons, Pausch’s best known engineering easy and fun, and (2) providing the novice user with a legacy is the 3D interactive graphics programming envi- set of core skills that would transition into learning ronment that he developed and named Alice (Pausch et computer science. A constant collaborator on Alice has al., 1995). Alice began as an easy to learn 3D graphics been Dennis Cosgrove, and it is in his good hands that program that allowed users to rapidly build VEs. It was Alice’s future is held. used by Pausch’s research team to build VEs and to de- Pausch was instrumental in creating the DARPA pro- velop and assess innovative user interaction techniques gram, Augmented Cognition, which defined an approach (Pausch, Burnette, Brockway, & Weiblen, 1995; that has become an emerging field within the HCI dis- Durbin, Gossweiler, & Pausch, 1995). There was more ciplines. As its name implies, Augmented Cognition is to Alice, however, than even Pausch imagined during its an interdisciplinary approach in which technology— early development and use. including real-time functional brain imaging—is em- In 1997, Pausch moved to Carnegie Mellon Univer- ployed to bolster people’s cognitive abilities. At the sity as an associate professor and was there promoted to heart of this approach is Pausch’s vision of bringing to- full professor in 2000. At the time of his move to gether people from diverse backgrounds—engineers, CMU, Alice was viewed as an easy to learn program that neuroscientists, and psychologists —to solve problems allowed novices to build interesting 3D interactive VEs. that transcend the boundaries of any individual disci- Shortly after the move, however, it became apparent to pline. 94 PRESENCE: VOLUME 18, NUMBER 1

Andy van Dam’s recognition of Pausch’s teaching solutions, it’s about doing the best you can with limited talent was validated repeatedly. During a sabbatical leave resources” (Pausch & Zaslow, 2008) was made when he at Virtual Reality Studio in knew that he was dying and would not be able to help 1995, Pausch learned the effectiveness of creating multi- raise his children for much longer. In September of disciplinary teams of designers, storytellers, and graphi- 2007, he gave a Last Lecture at CMU, in which he did cal engineers for the purpose of creating VEs in which the best that he could to preserve his life’s lessons as people would be immersed, not only in a place, but also stories meant for his children. Videos of this lecture in a story. At the Disney Imagineering Studio, the story have been viewed by millions of people around the was derived from the popular animated movie, Aladdin. world and a book by this title became a best seller. A version of this immersive scenario was installed in Dis- Pausch is survived by his wife Jai, and three children, ney World and Pausch conducted assessments of peo- Dylan, Logan, and Chloe. The man for whom it was Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/pvar/article-pdf/18/1/92/1624890/pres.18.1.92.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 ple’s experiences in it (Pausch, Snoddy, Taylor, Watson, written (Kelleher et al., 2008) that, “He inspires our & Haseltine, 1996). Pausch took the multidisciplinary community to be more ambitious, more collaborative, approach that he found so appealing at the Disney Stu- more inclusive, and to be courageous and joyful. In ev- dio and applied it to his Building Virtual Worlds course ery endeavor, Randy Pausch brings Wonderland to life,” at CMU. In this course, students from the arts and en- died on July 25, 2008. He was 47. gineering fields worked together to build virtual worlds. The “final exam” for this course was a show of their best creations, which was annually attended by a full Acknowledgments auditorium of 400 spectators from the CMU commu- nity. With Don Marinelli, Pausch co-founded the Enter- Randy’s work was performed with collaborators too numerous tainment Technology Center at CMU in 1998. This to mention by name. Most of their names appear in the refer- Masters Degree program provides training in the whole ences. In writing this obituary, I am indebted to the following range of interactive digital media and has become a individuals who provided assistance: Fred Brooks, Dennis model for other programs in this country and abroad. Cosgrove, Jessica Hodgins, Adam Fass, Caitlin Kelleher, Finally, Pausch was a gifted and effective mentor for Jeffrey Pierce, Desney Tan, Daniel Siewiorek, and Andy seven Ph.D. students. Listed in order of their degree van Dam. dates, they are , Matthew Conway, Jef- frey Pierce, Ken Hinckley, Desney Tan, Adam Fass, and Caitlin Kelleher. References Pausch was the recipient of an NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award, Lilly Foundation Teaching Dann, W. P., Cooper, S., & Pausch, R. (2003). Learning to Fellowship (UVA), Harrison Teaching Award (UVA), program with Alice. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. International Digital Media and Arts Association’s Durbin, J., Gossweiler, R., & Pausch, R. (1995). Amortizing 3D graphics optimization across multiple frames. Proceed- Award for Visionary Achievement in Higher Education ings of UIST 1995, 13–18. (joint with Don Marinelli), ACM Karl V. Karlstom Out- Gossweiler, R., Proffitt, D. R., Bhalla, M., & Pausch, R. standing Educator Award, ACM SIGCSE Award for (1995). A hill study: Using a virtual environment as a per- Outstanding Contributions to Computer Science Edu- ceptual psychology laboratory. IEEE Computer: Special Issue cation, and Leland S. Kollmorgen Spirit of Innovation on Real Applications for Virtual Reality. Award from the Human Factors and Ergonomics Soci- Hinckley, K., Pausch, R., Proffitt, D., & Kassell, N. F. (1998). eties, Augmented Cognition Technical Group (joint Two-handed virtual manipulation. ACM Transactions on with Dennis Proffitt). He is an ACM Fellow and will be Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), 5(3), 260–302. inducted into the CHI Academy this year. Kelleher, C., Myers, B. A., Siewiorek, D. P., Cosgrove, D., Pausch’s statement “engineering isn’t about perfect Pierce, J. S., Conway, M., & Marinelli, D. (2008). Special Proffitt 95

session in honor of Randy Pausch. Proceedings of CHI 2008, typing system for 3D graphics. IEEE Computer Graphics Workshops, 3997–4002. and Applications, 15(3), 8–11. Kelleher, C., Pausch, R., & Kiesler, S. (2007). Storytelling Pausch, R., Conway, M., & Deline, R. (1992). Lessons Alice motivates middle school girls to learn computer pro- learned from SUIT, the simple user interface toolkit. ACM gramming. Proceedings of CHI 2007, 1455–1464. Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS), 10(4), 320– Pausch, R. (1991). Virtual reality on five dollars a day. ACM 344. SIGCHI 1991: Human Factors in Computing Systems, 265– Pausch, R., Proffitt, D., & Williams, G. (1997). Quantifying 270. immersion in virtual reality. Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Pausch, R., Burnette, T., Brockway, D., & Weiblen, M. E. 1997, 13–18. (1995). Navigation and locomotion in virtual worlds via Pausch, R., Snoddy, J., Taylor, R., Watson, S., & Haseltine, flight into hand-held miniatures. Proceedings of SIGGRAPH E. (1996). Disney’s Aladdin: First steps toward storytelling

1995, 399–400. in virtual reality. Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 1996, 193–203. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/pvar/article-pdf/18/1/92/1624890/pres.18.1.92.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 Pausch, R., Burnette, T., Capehart, A. C., Conway, M., Cos- Pausch, R., & Zaslow, J. (2008). The last lecture. New York: grove, D., DeLine, R., et al. (1995). Alice: A rapid proto- Hyperion Books.