About me
I am an Assistant Professor in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan, also affiliated with the School of Information and Michigan Medicine. I am also the ACM SIGCHI VP for Accessibility, overseeing the executive committee policy and accessibility of over 27 SIGCHI sponsored conferences. I received my PhD from University of Washington, masters from MIT Media Lab, and I have worked at Microsoft Research, Google, and Apple.
My research lies in human-computer interaction (HCI). At Michigan, I lead the Accessibility Lab, where I am joined by a passionate group of students and collaborators with one common aim: to build and study interactive systems that solve pressing accessibility challenges. Our research work has been released publicly, has directly impacted products at Microsoft, Google, and Apple, and has been honored with several best paper and honorable mention awards. Please see our lab's website for our current focus areas and projects.
I also have over 10 years of experience serving in departmental and conference committees on DEI and accessibility. I was instrumental in pioneering new efforts at leading computer science conferences to improve accessibility of poster sessions for blind attendees and real-time captioning for deaf and hard-of-hearing attendees. I am also a member of HCI4SoundAsia, with aims to broaden participation of South East Asian researchers in human-computer interaction conferences, and I am currently serving as the inaugural ACM SIGCHI VP for accessibility.
I teach Accessibility Studio for undergraduate students (in Winter) and Advanced Accessibility for graduate students (in Fall). I also frequently participate in educational outreach, in the form of two-week DIY workshops, which I help co-organize with local instructors. Thus far, I have organized seven workshops in four different countries. These events have been hugely successful in inculcating an entrepreneurial mindset in underserved students. To disclose a specific known outcome, three teams of undergraduate students have continued their projects from the workshops and turned them into multinational companies with global impact!
