Todd Richmond

By day, Todd Richmond is the Director of Advanced Prototypes at the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT). By night he is a musician, visual artist, and conceptual trouble maker. Todd coined the terms "Emulsional Worlds" and "Emulsional Reality" to describe the challenges humans face in an increasingly virtual world and how analog and digital can coexist.

In a previous life Todd was a chemistry professor at The Claremont Colleges where early in his faculty career he incorporated multimedia and Web technologies into his teaching and research. That work led him to evolve from his specific focus on chemistry to instead pursue a broader understanding of technology and content. This accelerated in 2000 when transitioning to become managing director of the USC Annenberg Center for Communication, a new media research center. In 2006 Todd moved to the ICT and currently he works in a variety of areas: emerging disruptive technologies and their implications/applications for training, learning, and operations, future environments for communication and collaboration, counter-IED and situational awareness training; immersive technologies; interactive education; visualization. He works closely with the USC School of Cinematic Arts and on the music tip, he has studied with Grammy- winning bassist Victor Wooten, and his band nostatic released the album “Time’s Up” in 2014.

For those keeping score at home, Todd received a B.A. in chemistry from the University of San Diego, and went on to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry from Caltech, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in protein engineering at the U.C. San Francisco.