John A. Watlington

John A. Watlington is affiliated with the MIT Media Lab, where he is on leave from his doctoral research under Dr. V. Michael Bove, Jr. His primary roles include research in computer architecture for sensory data processing and structured video. He previously worked at France Telecom R&D in Boston (2002–2006) exploring home services and at Ucentric Systems (2000–2002) developing the Home Server. He currently contributes to the One Laptop per Child initiative, architecting the school server. His projects include Metafinger (a multimedia extension of the finger protocol) and the Cheops scalable image processing system. Key interests involve efficient machine design for motion/image processing and object-based video systems.

Research highlights include his early thesis on 'Synthetic Movies' and work on home server ecosystems as resource-rich peers to devices. Technical expertise spans hardware development, system architecture, and structured video composition using Isis.

• Education: B.Sc. 1987 (MIT), Doctoral Research (on leave).
• Key Projects: School Server (OLPC), Metafinger, Cheops, Home Server (Ucentric).