Mark Pesce

In 2003, Pesce relocated to Australia, where he continues to live, and became an Australian citizen on 4 February 2011. He is an Honorary Lecturer at the University of Sydney and was a judge on The New Inventors, a nationally televised program in Australia.

In 2008, Pesce began writing an online column for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's The Drum Opinion.

In 2006, Pesce founded FutureSt, a Sydney consultancy, serving as an advisory to analytic's firm PeopleBrowsr, and The Serval Project.

From January 2004 through January 2006, Pesce was the senior lecturer in Emerging Media and Interactive Design at the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS) in Sydney, Australia. He now holds an Honorary Appointment at the University of Sydney and has shared some of his lectures online.

Pesce began his teaching career in 1996 as a VRML instructor at both the University of California at Santa Cruz and San Francisco State University, where he would later create the school's certificate program in the 3-D Arts. In 1998, Pesce was asked to join the faculty of the University of Southern California, as the founding chair of the Graduate Program in Interactive Media at the USC School of Cinema-Television.

In 1993, Apple hired Pesce as a consulting engineer to develop interfaces between Apple and IBM networking products. In early 1994, while in San Francisco, Pesce, with software engineers Tony Parisi and Gavin Bell, spearheaded an effort to standardize 3D on the Web, and formed VRML Architecture Group (VAG), under the leadership of Pesce. The purpose of VRML was to allow for the creation of 3D environments within the World Wide Web, accessible through a web browser. Working in conjunction with such corporations as Microsoft, Netscape, Silicon Graphics, Sun Microsystems and Sony, Pesce convinced the industry to accept the new protocol as a standard for desktop virtual reality. This development spring-boarded Pesce into a career which has included extensive writings for both the popular and scientific press, teaching and lecturing at universities, conferences, performances, presentations, and films appearances.

In 1991, Pesce founded the Ono-Sendai Corporation, named after a fictitious company in the William Gibson novel Neuromancer. Ono-Sendai was a first-generation virtual reality startup, chartered to create inexpensive, home-based networked VR systems. The company developed a key technology, which earned Pesce his first patent for a "Sourceless Orientation Sensor" that tracks the motion of persons in virtual environments. Sega Corporation of America would use the technology on the design of the Sega VR, a consumer head-mounted display (HMD).

In 1988, Pesce joined Shiva Corporation, which pioneered and popularized dial-up networking. Pesce's role in the company was to develop user interfaces, and his research extended into virtual reality.

Mark D. Pesce (/ˈ p ɛ ʃ i / PESH -ee; born 1962) is an American-Australian author, researcher, engineer, futurist and teacher.

Pesce was born in Everett, Massachusetts in 1962. In September 1980, Pesce attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for a Bachelor of Science degree, but left in June 1982 to pursue opportunities in the newly emerging high-tech industry. He worked as an engineer for the next few years, developing prototype firmware and software for SecurID cards.