Czerwinski, Mary

Mary Czerwinski (right) raises a glass with Ben Shneiderman, Ebad Banissi, and Robert Spence at the International Conference on Information Visualisation in London, England, UK in July 2001.

Mary Czerwinski keeps interaction at the forefront of her research, which focuses on how humans work, particularly their ability to multitask, visualize information, and apply it to a variety of devices and programs. To this end, she focused her career on improving designs to maximize effectiveness, minimize interruptions, and improve group awareness, which has in turn garnered her more than 30 U.S. patents. During her lengthy tenure as Research Manager at Microsoft, she pursued advanced research and influenced many products that have benefited millions of customers. Czerwinski served as SIGCHI Executive Vice President from 2003 to 2006, was elected to the ACM CHI Academy in 2010, and made ACM Fellow in 2015.

 

“In my dozens of encounters with Mary at conferences and Microsoft, she was consistently energetic, informed, and ready to work on fresh ideas.  Her tenure in the SIGCHI leadership brought new energy to the group, engaging young researchers and advancing the community.  Her public talks draw strong crowds, whom she inspires with her stories of using research methods to shape products.  I once challenged an assumption in Mary’s work, to which she responded sympathetically, and when we next met she presented a research study with important new results about menu design.  She has a remarkable ability to take research ideas and produce theoretical insights plus commercially viable product features.” – Ben Shneiderman

Mary Czerwinski and Jim Miller at the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in The Hague, The Netherlands in April 2000.

Mary Czerwinski and Catherine Plaisant at the IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization in Austin, Texas in October 2004.

Mary Czerwinski with Tom Hewett and William Kules at the Creativity Support Tools workshop in Washington, D.C. in June 2005.

Mary Czerwinski (right) and Janice Rohn at the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Vancouver, Canada in April 2011.

Mary Czerwinski at theACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Vancouver, Canada in April 2011.

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Education:

• Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology, University of Indiana Bloomington (1988)
• M.A. in Experimental Psychology, Ball State University (1981)
• B.A. in Psychology, Ball State University (1978)

Affiliation:

• Adjunct Faculty, iSchool (2011 – Present); Affiliate faculty, Department of Psychology (1996 – 2009); University of Washington
• Editorial Board, Information Visualization, (2003 – Present)
• Executive Vice-President (2003 – 2006), Communications Vice-President (2001 – 2002), ACM SIGCHI
• Research Manager, Visualization and Interaction Research Group, Microsoft Research (1995 – Present)
• Research Lead, Software Human Factors Design and Test, Compaq Computer Corporation (1990 – 1995)
• Adjunct Faculty, Department of Psychology, Rice University (1990 – 1995)
• Applied Research Lead, Human-Computer Interaction Lab, Lockheed Engineering and Sciences Corporation (1989 – 1990)
• Technical Staff, Human Factors Engineer, Bell Communications Research (1988 – 1989)

Links

• Wikipedia 
• Election to ACM CHI Academy 2010
• ACM CHI Lifetime Service Award Biography 2010
• Microsoft Research Biography
• Washington Post article on Czerwinski’s work, published January 2014