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Michael Wessely is a post-doctoral researcher working with Stefanie Mueller in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research focuses on the fabrication of physical user interfaces using smart materials that integrate computing capabilities and can sense and control their material properties.

Judith Olson is the Richard W. Pew Professor of Human Computer Interaction at the University of Michigan. She is a professor in the School of Information, the Business School, and the Psychology Department. She got her Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of Michigan then held a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University before returning to Michigan as a faculty member. Except for three years at Bell Labs and a year at Rank Xerox Cambridge, UK, she has been at Michigan her entire professorial life.

Randy Pausch is an Associate Professor of Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction, and Design at Carnegie Mellon, where he is the co-director of CMU’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC). He was a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator and a Lilly Foundation Teaching Fellow. In 1995, he spent a Sabbatical with the Walt Disney Imagineering Virtual Reality Studio, and currently consults with Imagineering on interactive theme park attractions, particularly for the “DisneyQuest” virtual-reality based theme park.

Daniel Siewiorek is the Buhl professor in Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is also Director of the Human-Computer Interaction Institute in the School of Computer Science. He helped initiate and guide the Cm* project that culminated in an operational 50-processor systems. He was a key contributor in the design of over two dozen commercial computing systems and designed or was involved in designing nine multiprocessor systems. He guided the design of 20 generations of mobile computing systems.

Clifford Nass is a professor of communication at Stanford University, with appointments by courtesy in computer science, science technology and society, sociology, and symbolic systems (cognitive science). He is author of The Media Equation (with Byron Reeves), the forthcoming Voice Activated: The Psychology and Design of Interfaces that Talk or Listen, and over 60 articles in the areas of social responses to media and methodology.

Justine Cassell holds the AT&T Research Chair and is a full professor in the departments of Communication Studies and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Northwestern University, with courtesy appointments in Linguistics and Learning Science. She is also the director of the Northwestern Center for Technology and Social Behavior, and the director of the new doctoral program in Technology and Social Behavior. Before coming to Northwestern, Cassell was a tenured professor at the MIT Media Lab where she directed the Gesture and Narrative Language Research Group.

Helen Abadzi is an education specialist at the Education for All Fast Track Initiative (EFA FTI) secretariat. By background she is an educational psychologist with a doctorate in general-experimental psychology from the University of Texas at Arlington (1983). She has worked at the World Bank for 23 years, 14 of them at the Independent Evaluation Group. As an evaluator, Helen visited completed projects financed by the Bank in many countries and learned a lot about making instruction more efficient in the schools of the poor.

Dr. Lace Padilla is an Assistant Professor in the Cognitive and Information Sciences Department at the University of California Merced and was an NSF Postdoctoral Scholar at Northwestern University. Padilla is the PI and CO-PI on grants funded by NSF, DOE, and NASA. She received the best paper award at IEEE VIS 2022 and an Early Career Award from APA in 2020. In her spare time, she is a strong advocate for minoritized groups in STEM, serving on the IEEE VIS Inclusivity Committee and the Governing Board of Spark Society. She has received several grants and awards for her diversity work.

Dr. Celine Latulipe has a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo in Canada. She is an Assistant Professor of Human-Computer Interaction in the Department of Software and Information Systems in the College of Computing and Informatics at UNC Charlotte. Dr. Latulipe has long been fascinated by two-handed interaction in the real world, and the absence of it in the human-computer interface. She has developed numerous individual and collaborative two-handed interaction techniques and these have blossomed into a more general exploration of creative expression. Dr.

Dr. danah boyd is a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research, a Research Assistant Professor in Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, a Fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, a Research Fellow of the Born This Way Foundation, and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales.

Richmond Y. Wong is an Assistant Professor of Digital Media at Georgia Tech's School of Literature, Media, and Communication. He directs the Creating Ethics Infrastructures Lab where his research seeks to create social, cultural, and organizational environments that can support technologists and designers in ethical decisionmaking. Richmond's work utilizes qualitative and design-based methods, drawing from critically-oriented human computer interaction, science & technology studies, and speculative and critical design.

If you’ve ever seen Jared speak about usability, you know that he’s probably the most effective, knowledgeable communicator on the subject today. What you probably don’t know is that he has guided the research agenda and built User Interface Engineering into the largest research organization of its kind in the world. He’s been working in the field of usability and design since 1978, before the term “usability” was ever associated with computers.