University of Toronto Professor and Media Lab alum Steve Mann (Perceptual Computing) is the recipient of the 2025 IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award. This award is given for outstanding contributions to consumer electronics technology. It is named in honor of Masaru Ibuka, co-founder and honorary chairman of Sony Corporation. Mann has been recognized for contributions to the advancement of wearable computing and high dynamic range imaging.

Mann has been acknowledged as “the father of wearable computing” and “the father of wearable augmented reality (AR)." He received his PhD from MIT in 1997, and is a tenured full professor at the University of Toronto. 

Mann co-created the new discipline of Humanistic Intelligence and is the inventor of the hydraulophone, the world’s first musical instrument to make sound from vibrations in liquids, giving rise to a new theory of reverse kinematics and mechanics based on the time-integral of displacement.

Mann has authored more than 200 publications, books and patents, and his work and inventions have been shown at the Smithsonian Institute, National Museum of American History, The Science Museum, MoMA, and others.

An awards ceremony will be held at the IEEE 43rd International Conference on Consumer Electronics in Las Vegas, Nevada on January 12. During the conference, Mann will also chair a panel on the future of Wearable AI and XR.