Hello, I'm DJ!

I am an Assistant Professor in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan, with affliations in the School of Information and Michigan Medicine. I am also the ACM SIGCHI VP for Accessibility. I received my PhD from the University of Washington, a master's from the MIT Media Lab, and have briefly worked at Microsoft Research, Google, and Apple.

My research intersects the fields of human-computer interaction, accessibility, and sound design. I direct the Soundability Lab, where I am joined by a passionate group of students and collaborators, with an aim to design, build, and study interactive systems that enrich everyday sound experiences. Our research efforts are concentrated across four key areas, detailed here. This work is generously supported by National Institutes of Health (NIH), Google, and Michigan Medicine, and has resulted in wide scale impact both through direct public releases (e.g., one deployed app with over 100,000 users) and by influencing flagship products at leading companies such as Google, Apple, and Microsoft.

In 2023, I received the Google Scholar Research Award and the SIGCHI Outstanding Dissertation Award. In 2021, I was awarded the Microsoft Research Dissertation Grant. In 2015, I was recognized as a Google Lime Fellow.

I teach EECS 495: Accessible Computing to undergraduate students and EECS 598: Advanced Accessibility to graduate students. Additionally, I organize studio-style DIY workshops tailored for students with diverse educational backgrounds. To date, I have led seven workshops spanning across four countries. Notably, several student teams from these workshops have transitioned their projects into successful multinational ventures. Beyond academia, I am also a certified scuba instructor.

See my curriculum vitae, lab website, Google Scholar page, or contact me on profdj [at] umich [dot] edu.