News

Sun, 03/24/2024

HCDE Associate Professor Kate Starbird appeared in a segment of 60 minutes that aired on March 24, 2024, about the right of free speech on social media platforms—an issue currently under discussion by the US Supreme Court.

Fri, 03/01/2024

HCDE Assistant Professor Nadya Peek has received a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program Award from the National Science Foundation. The five-year, over $700,000 grant will support Peek and students in her lab, Machine Agency, in revolutionizing how we approach small-scale automation across the digital/physical divide. 

Thu, 02/29/2024

HCDE Professor and Chair Julie Kientz is joining the esteemed ranks of the SIGCHI Academy, and Associate Professor Kate Starbird receives the prestigious 2024 SIGCHI Social Impact Award. These awards celebrate their remarkable contributions to Human-Computer Interaction, recognizing their excellence in research, teaching, practice, and service. 

Tue, 02/27/2024

Melissa Ewing and Meghan Oxley, staff in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering, were nominated for the 2024 UW Distinguished Staff Award in the category of impact, recognizing them for their exemplary contributions to the department and University.

Thu, 02/22/2024

Judy Ramey, one of HCDE’s founding faculty members and former department chair, has written a libretto for an opera titled Valparaiso, a chamber opera set in a retirement home that "explores the humor and pain, the love and loss, of four residents as they navigate the changes and challenges of advancing age." Ramey and composer Steven Luksan will debut Valparaiso at Seattle’s Horizon House in March 2024, with additional performances planned in the spring and summer.

Tue, 01/23/2024

HCDE and Allen School professors Sucheta Ghoshal, Daniela Rosner, and Vikram Iyer have been awarded a new $1.66 million grant from the National Science Foundation to explore community-based integration of smart technologies into black diasporic agriculture practices.
Collaborating with diasporic farming communities in the Seattle area and beyond, the researchers will study how AI impacts diasporic urban farming and how the co-development of AI-based tools shapes diasporic knowledge.

Tue, 11/28/2023

UW researchers, including HCDE PhD Candidate Sourojit Ghosh, found that when prompted to create pictures of “a person,” the AI image generator over-represented light-skinned men, sexualized images of certain women of color and failed to equitably represent Indigenous peoples.

Thu, 10/12/2023

Dr. Katya Cherukumilli, assistant professor in HCDE, brings a background in interdisciplinary research that combines methods in human-centered design, environmental engineering, and public health to advance equitable access to safe drinking water.

Mon, 10/09/2023

Dr. Shana Lee Hirsch, senior research scientist in HCDE and co-director of the Pacific Marine Energy Center, is the UW lead on a new grant to study the needs and opinions of coastal communities regarding potential offshore wind energy development.

Thu, 09/07/2023

In a keynote presentation delivered at the International Conference on Transdisciplinary Engineering, HCDE Professor Cynthia Atman overviews her decades of research exploring how engineering students and experts engage in design, and how her findings can be useful for teaching design to engineers.