He has co-edited two books on automatic programming and is author of Great Ideas in Computer Science: A Gentle Introduction, The MIT Press, 1990 (second edition, 1997). He is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Symbolic Computation and the International Journal of Speech Technology. Biermann received the BEE and MS degrees from The Ohio State University in 1961 and a Ph. D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1968, all in electrical engineering and computer science. He is a member of the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers, the Association for Computing Machinery, the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), and the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL). He is a fellow of the AAAI and past president of the ACL.
Tora Bikson is a senior scientist in RAND Corporation's Behavioral Sciences Department. She received B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. (1969) degrees in philosophy from the University of Missouri at Columbia and M.A. and Ph.D. (1974) degrees in psychology from the University of California at Los Angeles. Since 1980, Dr. Bikson's research has investigated properties of advanced information technologies in varied user contexts, addressing such issues as what factors affect the successful incorporation of innovative tools into ongoing activities; how these new work media influence group structures and interaction processes; what impact they have on task and social outcomes as well as user satisfaction; and what individuals and organizations need to know to use them effectively. She has pursued these questions as principal investigator for projects funded by NSF, the Office of Technology Assessment, and the John and Mary R. Markle Foundation. Her work emphasizes field research design, intensive case studies, and large-scale cross-sectional studies addressed to the use of computer- based tools in organizational settings. Dr. Bikson is a member of Data for Development (a United Nations' Secretariat providing scientific guidance on the use of information systems in developing countries) and a technical consultant to the U.N. Advisory Commission on the Coordination of Information Systems. She is a frequent reviewer for professional papers and has authored a number of journal articles, book chapters, and research reports on the implementation of new interactive media. She is a member of the AAAS, ACM, APA (fellow), Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. Dr. Bikson recently served on the NRC's CSTB Committee to Study the Impact of Information Technology on the Performance of Service Activities.
Thomas A. DeFanti, Ph.D., is director of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), a professor in the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and director of the Software Technologies Research Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). He is also the associate director for virtual environments at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
DeFanti is an internationally recognized expert in computer graphics. In the 24 years he has been at UIC, DeFanti has amassed a number of credits, including: use of his graphics language and equipment for the computer animation produced for the first Star Wars movie; early involvement in video game technology long before video games became popular; contributor and co-editor of the 1987 NSF-sponsored report Visualization in Scientific Computing; recipient of the 1988 ACM Outstanding Contribution Award; an appointment in 1989 to the Illinois Governor's Science Advisory Board; and, his appointment as a University Scholar for 1989-1992. DeFanti is also a Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery. He serves on the Technical Advisory Board of the Internet II and is a co-principal investigator of the National Computational Science Alliance.
Gerhard Fischer is director for the Center for Life-Long Learning and Design (L3D) at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is also a professor in the Computer Science Department and a member of the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado. Dr. Fischer's research interests are human computer communication, artificial intelligence, and education and computers, design, cognitive science, and software engineering. He is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery, American Association for Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science, Gesellschaft für Informatik, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. Dr. Fischer has written extensively in his field. He received his M.A. in mathematics from the University of Heidelberg, Germany, his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Hamburg, Germany, and a degree in habilitation in computer science at the University of Stuttgart, Germany.
Barbara J. Grosz is Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science in the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. She has written several seminal papers in discourse processing, and developed the discourse component of a number of natural language processing systems. She is widely regarded as having established the research field of computational modeling of discourse. A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), she is past president of the AAAI, was chair of IJCAI-91, and is a member and former chair of the Board of Trustees of the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence, Incorporated. Her current research encompasses four problem areas: computational theories of discourse and discourse processing, computational models of collaborative planning, investigations of the interactions between intonation and discourse, and techniques for combining natural language and graphics. Before joining the faculty at Harvard, she was director of the Natural Language program at SRI International, and co-founder of the Center for the Study of Language and Information. Professor Grosz received an A.B. in mathematics from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley.
Thomas Landauer is a professor of psychology and fellow of the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado. He received his B.A. in anthropology in 1954 from the University of Colorado, his M.A. in anthroplogy and psychology in 1958, and his Ph.D. in social psychology in 1960. His work includes basic and applied research, prototype building and testing, exploratory development, and design-methodology studies on a variety of topics, including (1) electronic text delivery systems (hypertext, digital libraries, multimedia), (2) simplified e-mail for residential use, (2) advanced information retrieval methods, e.g., Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), fisheye views, and unlimited aliasing, (3) methods for evaluating and improving user interfaces, e.g., heuristic evaluation, (4) empirical and theoretical studies of interface design issues, e.g., command names and menu organization, and (5) a wide variety of other topics, including cryptographic time stamping for digital documents, neural nets for speech recognition, and computer-enhanced communication sytems (MUDs). He was awarded a fellowship with the AAAS and the American Psychological Association (APA) (experimental psychology and engineering psychology) and is a charter member of the American Psychological Society (APS). Dr. Landauer has two patents, one pending, on software design for text and multimedia information retrieval using Latent Semantic Indexing.
John Makhoul received his B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the American University of Beirut in 1964, his M.S. degree in electrical engineering from the Ohio State University in 1965, and his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from MIT in 1970. Dr. Makhoul is chief scientist for Speech and Signal Processing at BBN Corporation, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a research affiliate with the Speech Communication Laboratory at MIT. Dr. Makhoul conducts research in speech analysis, synthesis, and compression, speech enhancement, automatic speech recognition, neural networks, and digital signal processing, including linear prediction, spectral modeling, lattice structures, and adaptive filtering. Dr. Makhoul is a fellow of the IEEE and of the Acoustical Society of America.
Bruce Tognazzini, a leading authority on software design, has been designing human-machine interfaces for more than 35 years. At Apple, he headed up both the Apple II and Macintosh human interface efforts. At SunSoft, as distinguished engineer in the Office of Strategic Technology, he led the Starfire project, outlining the future of computing. He is currently chief designer at Healtheon, a new start-up devoted to moving the medical industry onto the Internet. "Tog" has written dozens of papers, articles, and columns, is a contributing author of three books on human interface design, and is the sole author of two books, Tog on Interface and Tog on Software Design, both from Addison-Wesley.
Gregg Vanderheiden is a professor in the Human Factors Division of the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is also director of Trace Research and Development Center at the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin. He received his B.S. in electrical engineering (1972), M.S. in biomedical engineering (1974), and Ph.D. in technology in communication, rehabilitation, and child development, all from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is the principal investigator on more than 140 grants and projects in the area of rehabilitation engineering, access to national and next-generation information systems, computer access systems, and augmentative communication and writing for children and adults with disabilities. His activities include research, development, commercial facilitation, information summary, and training (pre-service and in-service). Dr. Vanderheiden has worked with industries on topics in a wide range of areas relating to more flexible interface design, disability access, and nomadicity. Interface extensions from Dr. Vanderheiden's work are included in most all of the major operating systems today, including MacOS, Windows 95, Windows NT, OS/2, and Unix/X-Windows.
Stephen Weinstein is employed at NEC America, Incorporated. Prior to that, he was a member of the Multimedia Communications Research Division at Bell Communications Research. His research concentrations are network communication of data, modems, and information transfer and retrieval. He is a fellow of IEEE and received the Centennial Medal from IEEE in 1984. Dr. Weinstein received his S.B. in 1960 from MIT, his M.S. in 1962 from the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. in 1966 in electrical engineering from the University of California.