Philip Kortum is currently a faculty member in the Department of Psychology at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Prior to joining Rice, he worked for almost a decade at SBC Laboratories (now AT&T Laboratories) doing human factors research and development in all areas of telecommunications. Dr. Kortum continues to do work in the research and development of user-centric systems in both the visual (web design, equipment design, image compression) and auditory domains (telephony operations and interactive voice response systems). He received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin.