By Brian Kinnee, HCDE PhD student
May 2023
Thanks to the department of Human Centered Design and Engineering (HCDE), along with their generous donors, I was able to travel to Hamburg, Germany and present my research at the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. As the first author of our paper, entitled "Autospeculation: Reflecting on the Intimate and Imaginative Capacities of Data Analysis," it meant a lot to me for the department and its donors to support my intellectual and academic endeavors. I got to present our research alongside world-leading experts in the field of human-computer interaction as a part of the very first panel at CHI 2023: "Data Politics and Poetics". This panel featured research on the political and poetic dimensions of data and data analysis--highlighting subjective and first-person experiences with and through data. It attracted a very large audience composed of thought leaders and experts from around the world.
Going to the CHI conference gave me and my work an unmatched level of exposure to other world-leading experts in the field. My research was received with even greater curiosity and enthusiasm than I had anticipated. I got to meet several of my research idols, and I also got to meet many collaborators in person for the first time. Without the support of the department and the department's donors, I would never have been able to travel as far away as Hamburg to support myself and my research career. Since presenting at CHI, my research has already been cited by natural language processing researchers. I am incredibly grateful for the resources that are available to PhD students in the HCDE department, and I hope that success stories like mine can continue to help pave the way forwards for students to continue pursuing their research and career dreams.
Give to support HCDE student travel
The Mary B. Coney Endowed Fund, named in honor of Emeritus Professor Mary Coney, supports HCDE students by funding costs associated with travel to conferences and international workshops. Your support of this fund enriches the HCDE student experience and enhances HCDE's influence in the field.