Dr. Julian Lombardi (born November 11, 1956) is an American inventor, author, educator, and computer scientist known for his work in information architecture, user interface design and in the design of computer systems that support collaboration between large numbers of users. Lombardi currently serves as Duke University's Assistant Vice President of Academic Services and Technology Support. He is also a Senior Research Scholar with Duke University's program in Information Science + Information Studies, an adjunct professor with Duke University's Department of Computer Science, and one of six principal architects of the Croquet Project, an effort to develop an open source software platform for creating deeply collaborative multi-user online applications (along with Alan Kay, David P. Reed, Andreas Raab, David A. Smith, and Mark McCahill).

A former biologist, Lombardi combined his interests in information technology, complex systems, and the phenomenon of emergence in biological systems to begin designing and developing computer-supported collaboration systems involving self-optimizing massively multiuser online 3D environments in the mid-1990s. Lombardi eventually founded ViOS, Inc. where, during the period from 1999-2001, he served as the venture capital-backed company's first CEO and then Chief Creative Officer/Software architect. There, he designed and implemented ViOS, a client-server technology that enabled the first 3D user interface to the Internet in the form of a highly customizable and massively multi-user online environment - essentially a very large scale social software system/3D wiki. From 2002-2005, he managed a software research and development group developing innovative media technologies for learning and instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

External links

• Croquet project website
• Julian Lombardi's Croquet Blog
• Duke Digital Initiative website
• University of Wisconsin-Madison Engage Program website
• DBLP bibliography entries for Julian Lombardi
• Howstuffworks article about ViOS
• Accenture Tech Watch briefing on ViOS (in Japanese)
• A review of ViOS

Living people | 1956 births | American educators | American computer scientists | Computer scientists | Duke University | American technology writers