Howard's research interests are computer graphics and virtual environments. as a member of the Advanced Interfaces Group (AIG) and has supervised several doctoral students. Howard's research projects have included:
Augmented reality, with preliminary work on an interactive display for public engagement.
Virtual environments for psychology research. Telepresence and telepathy in immersive virtual reality; used immersive virtual environments to test for telepathic effects:
Augmented Reality Image Synthesis (ARIS): augmenting photographs with correctly illuminated objects in real time.
Virtual environments for crime scene investigation. We worked with Greater Manchester Police on the REVEAL project, investigating reconstructing crime scenes using virtual environments with accurate global illumination.
VR for large-scale applications" (VRLSA) – concentrated on the development of industrial applications and resulted in the release of MAVERIK VR kernel.
Teaching
Howard led the undergraduate courses COMP27112Computer Graphics and Image Processing and COMP37111 Advanced Computer Graphics. At Masters level he taught computer graphics and databases.
Public engagement
Howard was active in public engagement, focusing on projects with schools. He founded and led the annual UK Schools Computer Animation Competition which ran 2008–2018.
Other activities
Howard is active in documenting the history of computers developed at the University of Manchester.