Advisory Board

Gregory D. Abowd is Dean of the College of Engineering and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern University.  Prior to joining Northeastern in March 2021, he was a Regents’ Professor and held the J.Z. Liang Chair in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech, where he also served as Associate Dean of Research and Space for the College of Computing. 

Abowd’s contributions to Human-Computer Interaction and Ubiquitous Computing have been recognized through numerous awards. In 2008, he was named a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). That same year, he was inducted into the ACM CHI Academy, the most prestigious honor for researchers in HCI. In 2009, he received the ACM Eugene Lawler Humanitarian Award for his work in autism and technology.

Dr. Abowd received the degree of B.S. in Honors Mathematics in 1986 from the University of Notre Dame. He then attended the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom on a Rhodes Scholarship, earning the degrees of M.Sc. (1987) and D.Phil. (1991) in Computation from the Programming Research Group in the Computing Laboratory. From 1989-1992 he was a Research Associate/Postdoc with the Human-Computer Interaction Group in the Department of Computer Science at the University of York in England. From 1992-1994, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate with the Software Engineering Institute and the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University.

Gillian R. Hayes is Vice Provost for Graduate Education and Dean of the Graduate Division at UC Irvine. She is also the Robert A. and Barbara L. Kleist Professor of Informatics in the School of Information and Computer Sciences at UC Irvine.

Dr. Hayes leads efforts to recruite graduate students and post-doctoral scholars, ensure their ability to thrive as scholars at UCI, and help them launch their careers. Her research interests are in human-computer interaction, ubiquitous computing, assistive and educational technologies, and health informatics. She designs, develops, deploys, and evaluates technologies to empower people to use collected data to address real human needs in sensitive and ethically responsible ways.

She received bachelor's degrees in computer science and mathematics from Vanderbilt University. She is a School of Interactive Computing alumna who received her Ph.D. in computer science from Georgia Tech.

Jessica Hodgins is a Professor in the Robotics Institute and Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University. From 2008-2016, she founded and ran research labs for Disney, rising to VP of Research and leading the labs in Pittsburgh and Los Angeles. From 2005-2015, she was Associate Director for Faculty of CMU's Robotics Institute. Before moving to Carnegie Mellon in 2000, she was an Associate Professor and Assistant Dean in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. Her research focuses on computer graphics, animation, and robotics with an emphasis on generating and analyzing human motion.

She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1989. She has received the NSF Young Investigator Award, a Packard Fellowship, and a Sloan Fellowship. She was an elected director-at-large on the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee from 2012-2017. In 2017, she was elected ACM SIGGRAPH President. She is the recipient of the ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award and the Steven Anson Coons Award for Outstanding Creative Contributions to Computer Graphics.

James Landay is a Professor of Computer Science and the Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayan Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University. Landay is also the co-founder and Associate Director of the Stanford Institute for Human-centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI). He specializes in human-computer interaction. He is the founder and co-director of the World Lab, a joint research and educational effort with Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Previously, Landay was a Professor of Information Science at Cornell Tech in New York City (2013-14) and a Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington (2003-2013). From 1997 through 2003 he was a professor in EECS at UC Berkeley. From 2003 through 2006 he was the Laboratory Director of Intel Labs Seattle, a university-affiliated research lab that explored the new usage models, applications, and technology for ubiquitous computing. He was also the chief scientist and co-founder of NetRaker, which was acquired by KeyNote Systems in 2004.

Landay received his BS in EECS from UC Berkeley in 1990 and MS and PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1993 and 1996, respectively. He was named to the ACM SIGCHI Academy in 2011 and named an ACM Fellow in 2017. He formerly served on the NSF CISE Advisory Committee.

Meredith Ringel Morris is a Principal Scientist and Director for Human-AI Interaction Research with Google Brain (now Google DeepMind). Previously, she was Director of the People + AI Research team at Google. Dr. Morris is also an Affiliate Professor at the University of Washington in the School of Computer Science and Engineering and in the Information School. Previously, she was Sr. Principal Researcher and Research Area Manager for Interaction, Accessibility, and Mixed Reality at Microsoft Research. She earned her bachelor's in computer science from Brown University and her Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University.

Dr. Morris has been named an ACM Fellow and elected to the SIGCHI Academy for her contributions to Human-Computer Interaction. She is the author of over 100 peer-reviewed research articles, many of which have been recognized with best paper awards, as well as Lasting Impact Awards from the UIST and ISS conferences. She has served as Technical Program Chair of the CHI, CSCW, ASSETS, and ISS conferences. She is a past member of the TOCHI editorial board and of the CSCW and CHI steering committees. She has been recognized as one of Technology Review’s “35 under 35” for her work on collaborative web search. Dr. Morris is an inventor with 22 U.S. patents.