Dr. W. Keith Edwards is a Professor in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech and Director of the GVU Center. His research interests focus primarily on driving human-centered concerns into core computing infrastructure. For example, he is a pioneer in the exploration of human-centered perspectives on computer networking, particularly in the home; he has also been active in developing more usable approaches to information security systems. Lately, his research has expanded into a number of explorations of the social impacts of computing technology, and understanding how technology can support the work of non-profits and NGOs. While he is a technologist at heart, he enjoys working with designers, as well as ethnographers and other social scientists.

An ACM Distinguished Scientist, Dr. Edwards has published over 80 scientific articles in major journals, conferences, and books, as well as two books on Sun's Jini distributed computing technology. An active inventor, he is the author of nearly four dozen U.S. and International patents either granted or pending. His research has been widely funded by both industry and governmental sources, including Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, Samsung, Google, Symantec, Steelcase, Nokia, Dell, NSF, and NIST.

He is an active member of the broader academic community, having served as the Technical Program Chair for the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) 2010, the Program Chair for the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) 2002, the Chair for the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) 2000, and the Editorial Advisory board for the Journal of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (JCSCW), among other leadership roles. He has also served on dozens of program committees for major conferences in disciplines ranging from human-computer interaction to information security to mobile computing. Outside the university, he is a member of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Academic Advisory Board, and has been a consultant for several major companies including Sun, BellSouth Information Systems, NeXT Computer, and SecureWare.

Prior to his current appointment at Georgia Tech, Dr. Edwards was a Principal Scientist at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), where he worked for nearly ten years. During his time there he worked in PARC's Distributed Systems group on distributed information systems and weakly-consistent distributed databases; he later managed PARC's Ubiquitous Computing group, created and led the development of the Speakeasy framework for ubiquitous computing, and made key contributions to PARC's technology commercialization and licensing activities.

Human-Centered Computing PhD Committee Member