Meet the people who make up STEM Faculty.
Blaine completed undergraduate studies in Mathematics and Computing & Information Science at Queen's University, Canada. His postgraduate work was at the University of Toronto where he also did an internship at Apple's Advanced Research Lab in Cupertino. In 1991 he came to the Open University as a Research Fellow in software visualization before being appointed as a Lecturer in the Computing Department in 1994. He was a major contributor to the Open University's early Internet based teaching, including the design of the first large scale assignment handling system.
He was seconded to the OU's Knowledge Media Institute in 1997 for 2 years as the Senior Systems Strategist, returning to chair the MSc dissertation module and begin research in IT Law and Privacy. Since then, he has supervised over a dozen PhD students in the area of privacy and ubiquitous computing and been co-investigator and principal investigator on a number of grants relating to privacy, mobile and ubiquitous computing, and wearables.
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.
Blaine is a co-Director of the OU's Digital Health Lab where he works with clinicians to utilise ubiquitous computing technology and machine learning to improve health and wellbeing. He has supervised over a dozen PhD students in areas including privacy, ubiquitous computing, wearables and digital health. Blaine welcomes enquiries from potential students with topics of possible interest. His current proposed topics are:
He was principal investigator on a number of Knowledge Transfer Partnership projects with industrial partners from 2009-2011. He was a co-investigator on the following projects:
Blaine's main teaching interests are in Ubiquitous Computing and Cybersecurity, especially Digital Forensics. He launched digital forensics teaching at the OU in 2006 and is a member of the M812 (Digital Forensics) module team and is a digital forensics accreditation assessor for the Chartered Society of Forensic Sciences.
Blaine's research was featured in the BBC TV flagship science series Horizon in a programme entitled 'Monitor Me' broadcast in August 2013. In November 2014 Blaine gave a TEDx talk entitled Am I Normal? why self-quantifying is for everyone. In 2020 he gave a public lecture at the Royal College of Physicians entitled Please don't show me your data (yet!).
Blaine works closely with clinicians and researchers at Milton Keynes University Hospital. He is an editor for the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) - Human Factors
