Rycharde Hawkes is a Senior Research Engineer at HP Laboratories in Bristol, UK and has 16 years experience as an industrial and academic researcher. His first job after graduating in 1991 was developing 3D rendering software for real-time 3D training and simulator systems.  He was a Research Associate at the University of Edinburgh where he gained his Ph.D. focusing on 3D virtual environment systems.  Rycharde continued this work when he joined HP in 1996 by concentrating on 3D collaborative environments, moving onto prototyping and successfully trialling one of the first location-based services in 2001: a public transport tracking service accessed by mobile phone. 

After working on a multi-media customer contact management solution, he focussed on developing the proof-of-concept of a convergent entertainment title for a large international broadcaster based around artificial life principles. He was Chief Architect for Frame Factory, a “pay as you go” utility 3D rendering service used to create The Painter, a short animated film with 422 South.  Rycharde assumed the same role for SE3D, a large collaboration with the Watershed, Autodesk, industry experts and funding bodies, enabling 11 aspiring animators to produce 11 short animated films. 

More recently, he has been focussing developing new ideas around interactive entertainment systems.  Rycharde is currently a member of HP Labs’ Pervasive Computing Laboratory taking a specific interest in pervasive games.  

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