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2007 SIGCHI Awards

2007 SIGCHI Awards

CHI Academy

The CHI Academy is an honorary group of individuals who have made extensive contributions to the study of HCI and who have led the shaping of the field.

This year we have elected six new Academy members. In alphabetical order, they are:

Joëlle Coutaz

Joëlle Coutaz is Professor “Exceptional Class” at University of Grenoble, France, and is the head of the HCI group of the CLIPS-IMAG laboratory that she founded in 1990. She was a pioneer in HCI in France, shaping HCI research via national institutions such as the CNRS national network. She has been a key participant in many European research projects, has been involved in organizing all the major HCI conferences, and served for several years on the editorial board of ACM ToCHI. Coutaz’s pioneering work connected HCI to software engineering and her research has shown great versatility, ranging from CSCW to Augmented Reality and Ubiquitous Computing. She is the author of the PAC architectural model for interactive systems and has developed a framework for understanding the plasticity of interactive systems. She is also the author of Human-Computer Interaction: Design and development (Dunod, in French, 1990) and the co-author with Len Bass of Developing Software for the User Interface (Addison-Wesley, 1991).

Karen Holtzblatt

Karen Holtzblatt is CEO and co-founder of InContext, a company at the leading edge in training clients to use customer-centered design to develop innovative designs and design processes. With a strong record of achievement in numerous companies, and for numerous product areas, Holtzblatt stands as an example of a practitioner par-excellence, teaching clients methods of systematic data collection, field observation, and analysis. The results for clients are deeper understanding of customer behavior, richer, successful products and services, and quite often, a restructuring of their practices and procedures.

Gerhard Fischer

Gerhard Fischer has had a long and distinguished career in the application of computational technology to important social issues, starting even before the existence of CHI. He is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder, as well as a fellow of the Institute for Cognitive Science and the Director and founder of the Center for Lifelong Learning and Design.

Fischer has introduced visionary, long lasting research themes to HCI. He is a prolific researcher, who creatively combines European and American research traditions. He has played a crucial role as an integrator of and mediator between HCI and a spectrum of related fields: AI, Software Engineering, Participatory Design, Computer Supported Collaborative Learning, and CSCW. His work has extended the boundaries of our field, trained numerous students, and serves as a role model for active professional contributions to the development of a scientific discipline that bridges society and technology.

Robert J.K. Jacob

Rob Jacob is a Professor of Computer Science at Tufts University. Rob was an early leader in creating and applying formalisms that are appropriate to the kinds of concurrent real-world interactions that are becoming prevalent in today’s post-WIMP interfaces. His work is notable for bringing system design, theoretical analysis, and quantitative measurement to bear on the problem. His early work on eye-tracking at the Naval Research Laboratory combined design and empirical studies to lay out basic issues. More recently, collaborations at the Media Lab have brought his theoretical perspective to bear on a wide range of tangible user interfaces. He was Vice Chair for Conference Planning 1990-1993, Papers Co-Chair of the CHI 2001 conference, and SIGCHI VP for Finance from 2001 to 2006.

Jun Rekimoto

Jun Rekimoto is the founding Director of the Interaction Laboratory within the Sony Computer Science Laboratories. His pioneering work has been at the forefront of efforts to apply new technology to interaction for many years. His research has explored a range of highly innovative techniques for combining the digital and physical worlds. Rekimoto’s clever devices and interaction techniques have extended the reach of interactive technologies into the everyday world, and represents some of the best work in computer augmented environments, tangible interaction, and mobile computing.

Christopher Schmandt

Chris Schmandt has been a Principal Research Scientist in the Media Lab at MIT since 1985. He is currently the Director of the Speech Interface Group. Formerly, he worked in MIT’s Architecture Machine Group from 1977 to 1985. During his career, he has authored over 60 research papers. He is an early pioneer in the uses of speech and non-speech audio in user interfaces. In fact, his first published work on interactive audio was in 1981, almost a decade before such technology was generally available. Some of his early work involved studies of how people might use voice to interact with email and other messaging systems. Other studies concerned how much speech could be sped up before it becomes unusable. He has done seminal work on architectures for integrating speech into interactive software. In 1997, he was the UIST program chair and has served on numerous conference program committees.

Congratulations to this year’s Academy.

Lifetime Achievement Award

The Lifetime Achievement Award is the most prestigious award SIGCHI gives. The criteria for achievement are the same as for the CHI Academy, only more so.

This year we present the CHI Lifetime Achievement Award to James D. Foley

James D. Foley

James D. Foley is Professor in the School of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing and Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He was the founding director of the Graphics, Visualization & Usability Center at Georgia Tech. Other past positions include CEO of Yamacraw, Georgia’s economic development initiative in broadband devices and chips, and the director of the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory (MERL) in Cambridge, Massachusetts and chairman and CEO of Mitsubishi Electric ITA, directing four labs in North America. He is a Fellow of AAAS, ACM and IEEE, and a recipient of the ACM/SIGGRAPH Stephen Coons Award for Outstanding Creative Contributions to Computer Graphics.

Foley was one of the computer graphics pioneers who came over to help establish HCI as a discipline. He is the first author of the leading text in computer graphics, part of which deals with core technical HCI issues such as input devices, interaction techniques, and dialogue design. From this base of credibility, he established the Graphics, Visualization & Usability Center at Georgia Tech. This institution became a major center for HCI research, the training of students and future faculty, and the codification of courses and content in the field. It is difficult to think of anyone who had a larger role in the institutionalization of HCI as a discipline. Foley’s technical work has been characterized by its breadth across HCI. He has contributed over 80 publications spanning computer graphics, input devices, visualization, user interface evaluation, perceptual issues, and user interfaces.

Lifetime Service Award

The CHI Lifetime Service Award goes to individuals who have contributed to the growth of SIGCHI in a variety of capacities. This award is for extended services to the community at large over a number of years. Criteria for this award are: Service to SIGCHI and its activities in a variety of capacities; extended contributions over many years; influence on the community at large.

Richard I. Anderson

Richard I. Anderson is a user experience practice, management, and organizational development consultant with more than 20 years of experience. He was on the founding committee and served as program chair (1990-2002) and chair (first elected chair) of BayCHI, the largest chapter of SIGCHI, but has also traveled around the world growing and facilitating SIGCHI chapters internationally. Richard was the SIGCHI Local Chapters Chair for 5 years, from 1996-2001. He authored numerous SIGCHI Bulletin articles, wherein he offered case studies, advice and support for local SIG leadership. He organized and led popular annual workshops for chapter leaders at the CHI conference. Richard also served as a member of 4 CHI conference committees (including the upcoming CHI ’08) and served as the CHI 2005 Development Consortium Chair, in addition to serving on the committee for 3 DUX conferences. Finally, Richard has authored multiple articles for interactions magazine. Through his leadership, he has facilitated and spread the word about human-computer interaction literally around the world.

Social Impact Award

This award is given to individuals who promote the application of human-computer interaction research to pressing social needs.

Gregory Abowd

Gregory Abowd is an Associate Professor in the College of Computing and GVU Center at Georgia Tech, and co-Director of the Aware Home Research Initiative. His research explores applications of ubiquitous computing technologies, combining both human-centered and technology-driven research themes. Since 1995, Dr. Abowd has lead the development and evaluation of several influential ubiquitous computing projects: Cyberguide; eClass (nee Classroom 2000); the Aware Home; and most recently a suite of tools to support caregivers for children with autism and other developmental disabilities. Dr. Abowd is the co-author of a major textbook on Human-Computer Interaction and has published over 150 peer-reviewed scientific articles in the areas of Ubiquitous Computing, HCI and Software Engineering. He is a 1986 graduate of the University of Notre Dame, where he studied Mathematics and Physics. He has a M.Sc. (1987) and D.Phil. (1991) in Computation from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. Prior to joining the faculty at Georgia Tech in 1994, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of York in the U.K. and at Carnegie Mellon University.

One of 12 children growing up in suburban Detroit, Dr. Abowd himself is the father of three children, two of whom have diagnoses on the autism spectrum. For the past four years, Dr. Abowd has been a strong advocate for technology research related to autism and serves on the Scientific Advisory Committee for the Cure Autism Now Foundation (now part of the Autism Speaks Foundation). In this role, he has been a strong advocate to encourage Computer Scientists to explore the applications of their work towards problems of relevance for the developmental disabilities community. He has also been an advocate to other researchers in the area of autism to consider the use of technology to improve their own work. With seed funding from CAN and SBIR funding from NICHD, he has started a company, Caring Technologies, to provide video recording services for schools and families wishing to communicate behavioral evidence to behavioral and medical professionals. Dr. Abowd is also a member of the Board of Directors for the Autism Society of America Greater Georgia Chapter and serves as the chair for adult services. In this role, he has helped to establish a mentoring program for adults on the autism spectrum, providing shelter, counseling and careers for these extremely talented but unfortunate souls in the Atlanta area. Dr. Abowd also serves as moderator for the Emory Autism Center’s Dad’s support group.

Gary Marsden

Gary Marsden is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science, University of Cape Town, South Africa. He completed his Ph.D. work at Stirling University in 1998. He now teaches computer science and HCI. Besides his academic interests in designing interaction for mobile computers including cell phones, a large part of his time is spent in examining how mobile computers can be used for betterment of the developing world. Gary edits the column “Under Development” in magazine, which is aimed at raising the profile of the developing world both in SIGCHI and in the worldwide HCI community. He has worked to help build a local community of HCI researchers and practitioners, serving the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists (SAICSIT), CHI-SA (the South African chapter of SIGCHI), and Afri-Graph (the South African chapter of SIGGRAPH) as well as bringing well-known HCI researchers for keynote presentations in South Africa. His book co-authored with Matt Jones, “Mobile Interaction Design”, includes chapters on how mobile technology can be used to make an impact in the developing world. Gary’s work and that which he inspires has significantly raised the profile of developing world issues in the wider HCI community and, similarly, has brought HCI to developing world’s computer science community.