Initiative in Innovative Computing (IIC) Harvard University

Chia Shen is Director of the SDR Lab at the Initiative in Innovative Computing (IIC) and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) at Harvard University. She was a Senior Research Scientist at MERL (the Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she also served as Associate Director of the Research Lab from 2003 to 2006. She currently directs the Scientists’ Discovery Room Lab (SDR). For one of her ongoing research projects, see INVOLV.

Dr. Shen is a leader in the field of multi-user, multi-touch tabletop user interface and computing. DiamondSpin, developed at MERL under her direction during 2001–2003, is the first open toolkit made available to the tabletop research community for the construction of experimental multi-user tabletop applications. It is continuously used, downloaded, and studied by academic institutes throughout the world. Her co-authored paper on the PDH (Personal Digital Historian), a tabletop story-sharing system, has been ranked as the most cited paper for the 2002 ACM CSCW (ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work). Read a more complete list of her work at the tabetopresearch web site.

Prior to moving to the field of Human Computer Interaction, she worked for over ten years in parallel and distributed real-time systems. She has given numerous keynote addresses at international conferences and workshops. Her professional services include serving on NSF review committees, as Conference Chair of the 20th ACM UIST 2007, as a member of the IEEE Technical Committees on Real Time Systems (1998) and Operating Systems and Application Environments (1999). Dr. Shen is on the Editorial Board of ACM Computers in Entertainment, as well as the Steering Committee of the IEEE Workshop on Tabletop and Interactive Surfaces. She has served on various conference and program committees related to human factors in computer systems, user interface technology, and graphics interfaces conferences, including recent service on the ACM CHI, ACM UIST, and GI program committees.