Professor Steve Mann
Steve Mann, Ph.D. is an Engineer, Professor, and Inventor best known for his work in augmented reality, extended reality, computational photography, particularly wearable computing, and the invention of HDR (high dynamic range) imaging.
He is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto, with cross-appointments to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Faculty of Forestry. He is a Professional Engineer licensed through Professional Engineers Ontario and a Full Visiting Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford.
Steve is considered the “Father of Wearable Computing”, recognized by IEEE for his early inventions and continuing contributions to the field. For this work, he received the 2025 IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award. He is also the General Chair of the IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society, Associate Editor of IEEE Technology and Society, Senior Member of the IEEE, and founding member of the IEEE Council on Extended Intelligence (CXI). Since 2017, Steve has also been the Chair of the SVIEF – Silicon Valley Innovation & Entrepreneurship.
In 2024, Steve received our 2024 Lifeboat Foundation Guardian Award for related work on Sousveillance.
He is the Cofounder and Scientific Advisor of InteraXon, a Canadian neurotechnology company founded in 2006 that makes the Muse brain-sensing headband. InteraXon develops brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) and state-of-the-art experiences by producing research-grade EEG headbands and related software applications.
In 2013, Steve cofounded and was the Chief Scientist at Meta Co., where they Kickstarted The Most Advanced Augmented Reality Glasses and continued with the Meta 2 Augmented Reality Headset. It was later acquired by Meta View. Read Meta’s Spaceglasses Promise Mobile Augmented Reality and Meta Rises from the Ashes Under New Ownership, Along with a New CEO.
Steve is the Chairman of MannLab. The purpose of this “Humanistic Intelligence Accelerator” is to invent technology for humanity, i.e., Inventrepreneurship (Invention + Entrepreneurship). Specifically, it researches, develops, and commercializes Steve’s inventions and those of his closest collaborators.
With locations in Toronto, Canada; Shenzhen, China; and Silicon Valley, California, MannLab is a global ecosystem where entrepreneurs, professors, students, product designers, engineers, and creative visionaries of all kinds have come together to shape how humans and technology will interact for the next 40 years and beyond for a better humanity based on HI (Humanistic Intelligence). Read Steve Mann on Inventrepreneurship and the ‘tree-shaped person’.
Steve was the CTO and Cofounder of Blueberry X Technologies between 2019 and 2021. Blueberry was started to help people better understand their state of mind and body by bringing to market a miniature biosensor (fNIRS—functional near-infrared spectroscopy).
Steve created the world’s first wearable augmented reality computer in his childhood in 1974 to visualize electromagnetic radio waves, and has been building the field of phenomenological augmented reality for over 40 years, including the founding of the MIT wearable computing project as its first member, inventing the world’s first smartwatch, the world’s first contact-lens display, the first implantable eye camera, and the first underwater musical instrument Hydraulophone, for which he coined the term Natural User Interface.
He invented the hydraulophone, a musical instrument similar to a woodwind instrument but using pressurized water instead of air. Steve has owned Splashtones since 2004 and is also a sculptor who builds hydraulophones as public art installations. He makes a variety of interactive water features in which users interact with the piece by touching the water jets in the fountain. Read Selected Artistic Works and Water Shapes.
Over 30 years ago, Steve also invented High-Dynamic-Range imaging, which is now used in nearly every commercially manufactured smartphone and many other cameras and computer vision systems, including systems to help the visually impaired see. He invented HDR imaging in his childhood and brought this invention to MIT, where he further refined it.
Steve is the inventor of WearComp (a wearable computer) and WearCam (eyetap camera and reality mediator).
He coined the term Sousveillance, a recording of an activity by a member of the public, rather than a person or organization in authority, typically using small wearable or portable personal technologies. Read Sousveillance: Inventing and Using Wearable Computing Devices for Data Collection in Surveillance Environments.
He has been working on his WearComp invention for over 20 years, dating back to his high school days in the 1970s. He brought his inventions and ideas to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1991 and is considered to have brought the seed that later became the MIT Wearable Computing Project. He also built the world’s first covert, fully functional WearComp with display and camera concealed in ordinary eyeglasses in 1995, for the creation of his award-winning documentary ShootingBack.
In 1991, Steve invented the Chirplet Transform, a new mathematical framework for signal processing, and of Comparametric Equations, a new mathematical framework for computer-mediated reality. He was the first to propose and implement an algorithm to estimate a camera’s response function from a plurality of differently exposed images of the same subject matter. He was also the first to propose and implement an algorithm to automatically extend the dynamic range in an image by combining multiple differently exposed pictures of the same subject matter.
His CyborGLOGS (‘glogs) and Glogger, such as the spontaneous reporting of news as everyday experience, were an early predecessor of blogs and the concept of blogging, and earlier than that, his pre-internet-era live streaming of personal documentary and cyborg communities defined cyborg-logging as a new form of social networking.
In 2003, Joi Ito credited Steve with initiating the moblogging movement by creating a system for transmitting real-time pictures, videos, and text. In particular, from 1994 to 1996, Steve continuously transmitted his life’s experiences in real time to his website for others to experience, interact with, and respond to.
Steve was the Publications Chair of the first IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computing (ISWC97).
He also chaired the first Special Issue on Wearable Computing to appear in a scholarly journal, Personal Technologies, and continues to chair Special Issues on Wearable Computing in other scholarly journals. He has also given numerous Keynote Addresses on the subject, including the Keynote at the first International Conference on Wearable Computing, the Keynote at the Virtual Reality conference, and the Keynote at the McLuhan Conference on Culture and Technology, on the subject of Privacy issues and Wearable Computers.
Steve is the author of more than 400 research publications and has collaborated with several researchers, including Ian Kerr, Canada Research Chair in Ethics, Law & Technology, University of Ottawa, who taught a course on “Cyborg Law” using Steve’s book.
Together with Kerr and others, Steve was working on an SSHRC-funded project to study the Ethics, Law, & Technology of anonymity, authentication, surveillance, and sousveillance, as well as issues related to cyborg law.
Steve earned his Ph.D. from MIT in 1997 for his work, including introducing Humanistic Intelligence. His research included Personal Imaging, Wearable Computing, Image Processing, Electrical Engineering, Physics, and Mathematics. He earned his Bachelor’s Degree of Science in Engineering Physics in 1986, Bachelor Degree of Electrical Engineering in 1989, and Master’s Degree Of Science in Electrical Engineering in 1991 from McMaster University.
He was also inducted into the McMaster University Alumni Hall of Fame, Alumni Gallery 2004, recognizing his career as an inventor and teacher. While at MIT, in then-Director Nicholas Negroponte’s words, “Steve Mann … brought the seed” that founded the Wearable Computing group in the Media Lab, and “Steve Mann is the perfect example of someone … who persisted in his vision and ended up founding a new discipline.”
In 2004, he was named the recipient of the 2004 Leonardo Award for Excellence for his article “Existential Technology,” published in Leonardo 36:1.
Steve wrote the lead article “Humanistic Intelligence: WearComp as a New Framework for Intelligent Signal Processing.” His textbook, Intelligent Image Processing, and a popular book about his life as a “cyborg”, Cyborg: Digital Destiny and Human Possibility in the Age of the Wearable Computer, further document his “mediated reality” concepts.
His patents include Method and apparatus for producing digital images having extended dynamic ranges, Method and apparatus for relating and combining multiple images of the same scene or object(s), and Wearable camera system with viewfinder means.
Steve was born in Canada and lives in Toronto with his wife and two children. He unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Toronto in the 2023 Toronto mayoral by-election. As part of his campaign, he advocated for recreational swimming in Lake Ontario and supported a petition to save the beach at Ontario Place.
In 2024, Steve was inducted into the Augmented World Expo’s XR Hall of Fame as a pioneer of augmented reality glasses! Steve has had a lasting influence in the eXtended Reality (XR) space and is a champion of sustainability and environmentalism. His inventions promote a symbiotic relationship among humans, technology, and nature.
Watch Wearable Computing Fashion Show at TED City Conference.
Read Father of Wearable Computing, Steve Mann, to Keynote FITC Wearables, Toronto, November 13th, When the camera lies: our surveillance society needs a dose of integrity to be reliable, and Steve Mann: My “Augmediated” Life.
Read Fifteen years later, Steve Mann is a visionary, not a ‘cyborg nut’.
Visit his LinkedIn profile, Google Scholar page, Wikipedia page, and ResearchGate profile. Follow him on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, ORCiD, and Twitter.