On Tuesday, June 22, ICICS hosted a full-day visit by Dr. Barbara Grosz, computer scientist and Dean, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, to our facilities. Dr. Grosz is an expert in human-computer interaction (see website http://grosz.seas.harvard.edu/), and 2010 Peter Wall Institute Distinguished Visiting Professor. Her ICICS visit preceded her Faculty Associates Dinner talk at the Peter Wall Institute on June 23 entitled, “Can’t You See I’m Busy? Designing Computers That Interrupt Only When They Should.” Dr. Grosz gave a similar version of this talk on June 22 to ICICS members and their students, who then had the opportunity to meet with Dr. Grosz.
ICICS members were are also invited to attend Dr. Grosz’s Faculty Associates Dinner talk at the Peter Wall Institute on June 23. An abstract of the talk, as well as a short biography of Dr. Grosz, follow.
June 23 Faculty Associates Dinner Talk:
“Can’t You See I’m Busy? Designing Computers That Interrupt Only When They Should.”
Ever been annoyed by a dialogue box that pops up trying to be helpful, but asks something stupid instead? Sometimes a computer system has information that would be helpful to its user; at other times, the system may need information that only its user has. Too often, computer systems control an interaction, forcing their users to accommodate them. Harvard computer scientist and Radcliffe Institute Dean Barbara J. Grosz will describe research that aims to shift the burden of adaptation from human to computer, so that computers respect our needs and adapt to us rather than the other way around.
About Dr. Barbara J. Grosz, 2010 Wall Distinguished Visiting Professor:
Barbara J. Grosz is dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, and Higgins Professor of Natural Sciences in the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Before becoming dean, she served as the Institute’s interim dean in 2007 and as Radcliffe’s first dean of science from 2001 to 2007. Dr. Grosz has been a member of the Harvard faculty since 1986 and has led several Harvard efforts aimed at increasing the participation of women in science. Her research in computer science, focused on finding ways to make computers behave more intelligently, draws also on work in linguistics, psychology, economics, and philosophy. In 2009, she received the ACM/AAAI Allen Newell award for her highly interdisciplinary research, including her pioneering contributions to improving human-computer communication. Dr. Grosz is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), the Association for Computing Machinery, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1993, she became the first woman president of the AAAI. Dr. Grosz serves on the executive committee and is a former trustee of the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence.