Pattie Maes, the Germeshausen Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT and head of the Fluid Interfaces analysis group throughout the MIT Media Lab, has been awarded the 2025 ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Research Award. She’s going to settle for the award at CHI 2025 in Yokohama, Japan this April.
The Lifetime Analysis Award is given to people whose analysis in human-computer interplay (HCI) is taken into account each elementary and influential to the sector. Recipients are chosen primarily based on their cumulative contributions, affect on the work of others, new analysis developments, and being an lively participant within the Affiliation for Computing Equipment’s Particular Curiosity Group on Laptop-Human Interplay (ACM SIGCHI) neighborhood.
Her nomination acknowledges her advocacy to position human company on the heart of HCI and synthetic intelligence analysis. Fairly than AI changing human capabilities, Maes has advocated for tactics during which human capabilities may be supported or enhanced by the combination of AI.
Pioneering the idea of software program brokers within the Nineteen Nineties, Maes’ work has all the time been located on the intersection of human-computer interplay and synthetic intelligence and has helped lay the foundations for as we speak’s on-line expertise. Her article “Social information filtering: algorithms for automating ‘word of mouth’” from CHI 95, co-authored with graduate scholar Upendra Shardanand, is the second-most-cited paper from ACM SIGCHI.
Past her contributions in desktop-based interplay, she has an intensive physique of labor within the space of novel wearable units that improve the human expertise, for instance by supporting reminiscence, studying, decision-making, or well being. Via an interdisciplinary strategy, Maes has explored accessible and moral designs whereas stressing the necessity for a human-centered strategy.
“As a senior college member, Pattie is an integral member of the Media Lab, MIT, and bigger HCI communities,” says Media Lab Director Dava Newman. “Her contributions to a number of completely different fields, alongside her unwavering dedication to enhancing the human expertise in her work, is exemplary of not solely the Media Lab’s interdisciplinary spirit, but in addition our core mission: to create transformative applied sciences and methods that allow individuals to reimagine and redesign their lives. We all have a good time this well-deserved recognition for Pattie!”
Maes is the second MIT professor to obtain this honor, becoming a member of her Media Lab colleague Hiroshi Ishii, the Jerome B. Wiesner Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT and head of the Tangible Media analysis group.
“I’m honored to be acknowledged by the ACM neighborhood, particularly on condition that it may be troublesome generally for researchers doing extremely interdisciplinary analysis to be appreciated, although among the most impactful improvements typically emerge from that model of analysis,” Maes feedback.
