Oliver Schneider is an Associate Professor in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at the University of Waterloo. He leads the Haptic Experience (HX) Lab, which conducts research at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), haptics, and physical and multisensory interaction. Oliver and his group focus on HX research: understanding haptic experience design and evaluation, and enabling anyone, anywhere to be able to work with haptic technology to achieve meaningful impact, with application areas including health, accessibility, sustainability, and social justice.
Oliver holds a PhD (2017, NSERC CGS D) and MSc (2012, NSERC CGS M) in Computer Science from The University of British Columbia supervised by Karon MacLean, and BSc Honours (Most Outstanding Graduate in Computer Science, NSERC USRAs) from the University of Saskatchewan, where Carl Gutwin supervised his honours thesis. During his PhD, Oliver collaborated with Disney Research on novel haptic interactions as an intern and then consultant, working with Ali Israr. From 2017-2018, Oliver was a postdoctoral scholar (NSERC PDF) with Patrick Baudisch at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany. As faculty, Oliver’s research program has been supported by over $1M in competitive grants from internal, provincial, national, and industry sources. His group is constantly looking for impact beyond the lab, including developing and maintaining software and hardware tools used by researchers and practitioners.