Dr. Kristina Hooper Woolsey is an American scholar and cognitive scientist known as the "mother of multimedia" for her pioneering work at the

Apple Multimedia Lab The Apple Multimedia Lab was a pioneering electronic media research group operated by Apple Computer. It was founded in 1987 by cognitive psychologist Kristina Hooper Woolsey Dr. Kristina Hooper Woolsey is an American scholar and cognitive s ...

an
Atari Research Labs
which she directed. Woolsey was a founding member of the Apple Human Interface Group. She was named a Distinguished Scientist by

Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...

in acknowledgment of her pioneering work in multimedia in education, and an NMC Fellow by the New Media Consortium for her lifetime of contributions to the field. As a postdoctoral fellow in architecture in the 1970s, she explored the connections between "movies", e.g. film and video, and physical spaces. As an assistant professor at the

University of California at Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge o ...

she explored geographic information systems, working on the

Aspen Movie Map The Aspen Movie Map was a revolutionary hypermedia system developed at MIT by a team working with Andrew Lippman in 1978 with funding from ARPA. Features The Aspen Movie Map enabled the user to take a virtual tour through the city of Aspen, Color ...

as a visiting faculty member at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

. She has served in a myriad of roles, including executive producer of a range of critically acclaimed multimedia titles, including Life Story, the Visual Almanac, and Voices of the Thirties. Woolsey is author of many articles, chapters, and books, including ''VizAbility'', from Ceengage Publishers, which she coauthored with Scott Kim and Gayle Curtis. She served as co-editor with Sueann Ambron for ''Learning with Interactive Multimedia'' from Microsoft Press. In 2009 Woolsey was the Project Director for a Capital Project at the San Francisco

Exploratorium The Exploratorium is a museum of science, technology, and arts in San Francisco, California. Characterized as "a mad scientist's penny arcade, a scientific funhouse, and an experimental laboratory all rolled into one", the participatory natur ...

. She was also a member of the Emeritus Board of the New Media Consortium, an organization she has worked with since its inception, and Head of the Advisory Board for the Learning, Design and Technology Program at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. Woolsey also serves as Adjunct Faculty in th
Department of Cognitive Science
at

Case Western Reserve University Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is a private research university in Cleveland, Ohio. Case Western Reserve was established in 1967, when Western Reserve University, founded in 1826 and named for its location in the Connecticut Western Reser ...

. She is Director of the Marin Learning Conservancy and served as president of the Ross School Board of Trustees. She is also a member of the Advisory Council for the

New Orleans Center for Creative Arts New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, or NOCCA, is the regional, pre-professional arts training center for high school students in Louisiana. NOCCA opened in 1973 as a professional arts training center for secondary school-age children. Locate ...

. Her most recent projects include the not-for-profit Golden Age of Multimedia, which she authored, and New Media Thinking, in which she served as director.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Woolsey, Kristina Hooper American cognitive scientists Living people Atari people Apple Inc. employees Women cognitive scientists New media artists Stanford University faculty Case Western Reserve University faculty University of California, Santa Cruz faculty Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty Year of birth missing (living people)