About Us

She began working in multimedia production in 1987 when she co-produced a promotional video called Voices of Africa. She travelled through West Africa coordinating the project with Olatunji, a Chief, Elder and Master Drummer of the Yoruba tribe, with whom she also studied West African drumming and dance.

In 1989 Ms. Motha, a former teacher, founded the Endangered People Project, a California non-profit educational organization which utilized the media to 1) provide a voice for Indigenous people suffering human rights abuses and 2) develop awareness to influence international policy affecting rainforest development. She produced a multi-media documentary on the Penan and the Rainforests of Borneo which was presented to members of the U.S. Congress, the Canadian Parliament and the United Nations. As a result of her efforts, plans to establish a Joint Commission on the Human Rights of Indigenous People proceeded. She also co-ordinated an international effort to establish a UNESCO Biosphere reserve in Sarawak, Malaysia.

In recognition for his contributions, Mr. Morley has received numerous awards and honors from such diverse groups as Inc. Magazine (Entrepreneur of the Year) and Society of Manufacturing Engineers (Albert M. Sargent Progress Award). He recently made International Engineering News for his invention of the PLC, which was cited as number three of the top 100 most significant inventions of the century. The PLC is the most common embedded system used in manufacturing throughout the world.

Holding over 80 patents, Rines' inventions were also basic to solid state Loran boat and air navigation and to high-definition sonar scanning used in submarine detection, and the successful location of the Titanic and the Bismarc. They are used in new medical instrumentation that allows for noninvasive ultrasound imaging of internal organs. Rines has also adapted the same technology to perform scientific sonar searches for the Loch Ness "Monster" in Scotland from which he has attained images that appear to show a large flipper and body, some of the most noteworthy photographs ever taken of the monster. "The Beast of Loch Ness," a documentary of his Loch Ness expeditions was produced by NOVA in 1997. His patents are credited by the U.S. Army Signal Corps as the basis for nearly all the high-definition image-scanning radar used to provide early warning, weapons fire control and some artillery and missile detection radars used during the Persian Gulf War.

As a practicing attorney, Rines represents scores of inventors to secure legal protection for their innovations and he has commercialized technology through business formation and licensing in the US and throughout the world. He has entrepreneured start-up businesses, including several based on his own inventions. He is also a national spokesman for independent inventors. Rines founded the Franklin Pierce Law Center, Concord, New Hampshire, in 1973 and held the position of President until 1992 when he became Chairman of the Executive Board and Overseers. A professor at the Law Center and at MIT with classes on inventions, patents, and innovation at MIT, he was earlier the Gordon McKay Lecturer on Patent Law at Harvard.

He has served on the Technical Advisory Board of the US Department of Commerce and has also helped establish an invention-encouraging patent system in mainland China, and earlier in Taiwan, where he completed a Ph.D. thesis at Chiao Tung University in 1972. Rines is founder and president of the Academy of Applied Science, a nonprofit organization that conducts the National Junior Science and Humanities Symposia Program sponsored by the US Army, Navy and Air Force to encourage and reward high school scientific research, as well as the New Hampshire Young Inventors Program for primary schools.

Rines has written music for more than 10 Broadway and off-Broadway shows, including collaborating in the Emmy-winning television and then later Broadway production Hizzoner - the Mayor. He has also produced a ballet, Life at MIT, which was based on a musical suite he created at the tender age of 18. A workshop performance of the ballet debuted in May 1999 at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City.

His research has concerned computer graphics, hypermedia systems, post-WIMP user interfaces, including pen-centric computing, and educational software. He has been working for nearly four decades on systems for creating and reading electronic books with interactive illustrations for use in teaching and research.

The widely used reference book Fundamentals of Interactive Computer Graphics, co-authored with J.D. Foley, was published by Addison-Wesley in 1982; the greatly expanded successor, Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice, co-authored with J.D. Foley, S.K. Feiner, and J.F. Hughes, was published in June of 1990. An undergraduate version, by the same four authors and D. Phillips, Introduction to Computer Graphics, was published in 1993. Pascal on the Macintosh - a Graphical Approach, co-authored with David Niguidula, was published by Addison-Wesley in 1987. Object-Oriented Programming in Pascal, A Graphical Approach, co-authored with D. Brookshire Conner, and David Niguidula was published in April, 1995. Frontiers of Human-Centered Computing, OnLine Communities and Virtual Environments, (with Rae Earnshaw, Richard Guedj, and John Vince [Eds]) was published in February 2001, and Object-Oriented Programming in Java: A Graphical Approach, co-authored with Kathryn E. Sanders was published by Addison-Wesley in 2005. Van Dam has authored or coauthored over 100 papers.

Among his awards are the Society for Information Display's Special Recognition Award (1974), the IEEE Centennial Medal (1984), the National Computer Graphics Association's Academic Award (1990), the ACM SIGGRAPH Steven A. Coons Award (1991), the L. Herbert Ballou University Professor Chair (1992), the ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award (1994), the Thomas J. Watson, Jr. University Professor of Technology and Education Chair (1995), the IEEE James H. Mulligan, Jr. Education Medal (1999), and the ACM SIGCSE Award for Outstanding Contributions to Computer Science Education (2000).

In 1994 he became an IEEE Fellow and an ACM Fellow. He received an honorary Ph.D. from Darmstadt Technical University in Germany (1995), and an honorary Ph.D. from Swarthmore College (1996). In 1996 he was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering, in 2000 he became a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 2002 he received the CRA Distinguished Service award and the Brown University Sheridan Teaching award, and in 2004 was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.