The organizers of this workshop are actively involved in both research into shape-changing user interfaces and teaching shape-changing interfaces in design and arts classes. Tim Merritt teaches the Shape Changing Interfaces Course at Aarhus University while Antonio Gomes and Paul Strohmeier have taught Computing and Creative Arts at Queen’s University. Giovanni Troiano has been lecturer on the topic of Shape Changing Interfaces. Jason Alexander, Paul Strohmeier and Antonio Gomes were organization members of the previous workshops on shape-changing interfaces and maintain the continuity between previous and current workshops. Aske Mottelson supports the team with web-design and IT infrastructure.

Giovanni Maria Troiano is a PhD candidate at University of Copenhagen. His research focuses mostly on deformable interfaces for input, with special focus on musical interfaces and user experience investigation. His current project uses nanotechnologies and soft silicones to create multi-dimensional deformable interfaces. His paper User Defined Gestures for Elastic, Deformable Displays was awarded Best Paper at AVI’14.

Antonio Gomes is a PhD Candidate at the Queen’s University Human Media Lab. He has designed and evaluated technologies in the area of organic and shape-changing user interfaces. He investigated self-actuated physical transformations in flexible mobile devices and explored the use of shape-transformations for triggering GUI viewport transformation in multi-segmented mobile devices. His current research explores the ways people interact with self-levitating tangible interfaces.

Paul Strohmeier conducts research on the role of our bodies in HCI. He is interested in human-technological systems that make complex problems simple, allow for graceful ageing, expand what we can perceive and in consequence what we can think. He is interested in the dynamics between shape-changing interface and the body as shape changing medium. Paul is a PhD student at the department of Computer Science in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Aske Mottelson is a PhD student at the Department of Computer Science at University of Copenhagen. He is interested in enhancing the user experience with innovative computer systems, especially body based and affective user interfaces.

Jason Alexander is a lecturer at Lancaster University in the UK. His research focuses on bridging the digital-physical divide through the design, implementation, and evaluation of novel interactive systems. His recent work explores the application of shape-changing displays, their use for data physicalization, and methods for letting non-technical researchers engage with shape-changing displays.

Tim Merritt is associate professor at the Aarhus School of Architecture and lecturer at Aarhus University teaching interaction design courses focusing on various levels of scale from the handheld to city scale. Recent research explores how shape changing and haptic interfaces can function as tools for communication and learning for activities such as cooking, photography, extreme sports, and creativity.