Blaine Price

Career

In 1989, Price was a Summer Research Intern in Apple Computer's Human Interface Group. In 1990 he completed his MSc dissertation on automatic animation of concurrent programs and began his PhD research in Software visualization with Ronald Baecker. In 1991 he took a one year assignment in Open University's Human Cognition Research Lab (now the Knowledge Media Institute) and three years later he was appointed to a temporary contract as a Lecturer in Computing in the Faculty of Mathematics. The next year he was made a permanent Lecturer and launched a 4 year program to transform the delivery of Open University materials from paper and surface postal delivery to electronic delivery. He produced the first automatic system for large scale processing of student electronic assignment submission and return.

In 1997 he took a 2 year secondment as Chief Systems Strategist to the[Knowledge Media Institute. Upon returning to the renamed Faculty of Mathematics and Computing he resumed his academic role and conducted research in the use of robotics in teaching computing. In 2007 he launched the Open University's first course in Forensic Computing. The current version of this module is M812 Digital Forensics. In 2004 he began conducting research into privacy with a focus on mobile computing and lifelogging in particular. More recently he has concentrated on applications of wearables and IoT technologies on health and wellbeing. He continues to supervise students and conduct research in this area and is a Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator on a number of large projects funded by the UK and European Research Councils.

Blaine has always taken a human-centred approach to computing. He is interested in privacy in mobile and ubiquitous computing and in lifelogging technologies in particular, including both personal lifelogging and logging energy and resource usage. He has supervised PhD students in the areas of privacy, sustainable computing, digital forensics and more recently wearable and ubiquitous computing applied to healthcare. He was principal investigator on a number of Knowledge Transfer Partnership projects with industrial partners from 2009-2011, a co-investigator on the £1.2M EPSRC PRiMMA (Privacy Rights Management for Mobile Applications) from 2008-2011 and a co-investigator on the 5 year ERC funded ASAP (Adaptive Security and Privacy) where he is looking at security and privacy issues in lifelogging. He was also a co-investigator on the EPSRC funded Privacy Dynamics grant (2013-2017). He is Principal Investigator on the EPSRC funded Monetize Me grant (2014-2017) and Principal Investigator on the EPSRC funded [https://www.stretch-project.org STRETCH grant (2017-2020). He is also Chief Investigator on a number of studies at Milton Keynes University Hospital using wearable and ubiquitous computing to improve healthcare.

Blaine is an academic advisor for a number of BBC/Open University co-productions, an advisor to the Open Rights Group, a chartered digital forensic scientist and an accreditation assessor in digital forensics for the Chartered Society of Forensic Sciences.

He appeared on the BBC Today programme on 12 August 2013 in connection with the 'Monitor Me' programme on the BBC2 Horizon the same day.

In 2014 he gave a TEDx Talk at the University of Nicosia entitled "Am I normal? Why self-quantification is for everyone".

Selected publications

Personal

Price lives in Milton Keynes, England with his wife, Linda Price (Professor of Technology Enhanced Learning at Kingston University) and two children. He is the nephew of the noted Canadian geologist Professor Raymond A. Price.