Richard Lachman is Assistant Professor of Digital Media in the School of Radio and Television Arts, Ryerson University (Toronto, Canada). He also works as a Producer and Technology/Creative Consultant for entertainment and software-development projects.  Richard is a computer-science graduate of MIT, and holds a masters degree from the MIT Media Lab’s “Interactive Cinema” group. While at the Media Lab, he worked on networked collaborative entertainment environments and ambient/character-based interfaces, and has published and presented his work in Japan, Australia, Europe, and across the US.  In 1994 he worked on “Lurker”, one of the first multi-user narrative experiences to use email, digital video and the fledgling World Wide Web; the project appeared on the cover of American Cinematographer magazine.

Following his time at MIT, Richard developed highly-interactive and emotionally-evocative Artificial Life characters with San Francisco-based company PF Magic.  After an acquisition by Mattel, Richard served as Lead Designer and Lead Engineer for the Petz line (“Dogz” and “Catz”), with over 3 million units shipped worldwide and a highly active and self-sustaining online community.  The Petz series of CD-ROM software received awards from ID Magazine, Communications Arts, and Invision Children’s Entertainment, has been featured in the New York Times, USA Today and Time Magazine, and was part of an exhibition at the American Museum of the Moving Image in New York.

Richard returned to his home in Canada to work as a consultant on interactive entertainment projects, ranging from interactive television to hardware entertainment-devices to video games.  Some of his projects include: Tech Lead and part of the creative team on the first year of the Gemini-award winning “Degrassi.tv” (supporting the popular television series with an interactive-narrative/online-community project and over 400,000 registered users) with Snap Media, Epitome Pictures and CTV; Technical Director for “Code Zebra” (an arts/research based community tool) with Sara Diamond at the Banff Centre for the Arts; Creative Designer and Engineer for the “Fashion Television” Interactive TV prototype with ChumCity and Ryerson University; Chief Technology Officer with SnapCaster Networks, a digital jukebox and media-distribution startup; volunteer coding with Médecins Sans Frontieres Canada; and AI systems for the “Monster Federation” video-game project with Snap Media.  He has appeared as a technology commentator on TalkTV, and his interactive artwork has shown at the Next Door Gallery (Toronto), Outpost 42 (Toronto) and the Burning Man Festival (Nevada). He was also one of 5 finalists for Programmer of the Year in the 2003 Canadian New Media Awards

Richard is currently serving as Producer, Interactive for The Mars Project, a major convergent project by The Discovery Channel Canada, Galafilm, and QuickPlay Media. The project involvesinternational broadcast of multiple television series, a major interactive game/story system, online video, ITV, mobile applications, educational modules and museum exhibition. He also does research and teaching on Digital and Convergent Media as an Assistant Professor in the School of Radio and Television Arts at Ryerson University.