Steve Whittaker
Steve Whittaker is a Professor in Human-Computer Interaction at the University of California Santa Cruz. He is best known for his research at the intersection of computer science and social science in particular on computer mediated communication and personal information management. He is a Fellow of the "ACM", and winner of the CSCW 2018 "Lasting Impact" award. He also received a Lifetime Research Achievement Award from SIGCHI, is a Member of the SIGCHI Academy. He is Editor of the journal "Human Computer Interaction.". Life. He was born in Liverpool in the UK, in 1957. As an undergraduate  he studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge, obtaining his PhD in Cognitive Psychology at St. Andrews. He spent many years in industry where he worked at Hewlett-Packard Labs, AT&T Labs, and IBM Research Labs. Moving to academia he was Professor of Information Science at University of Sheffield, before relocating to the University of California in 2009. Research. He publishes in the fields of Human Computer Interaction and Computer Supported Co-operative Work. His applies social science theory to understand people's interactions with technologies, using these insights to design new human-centric technologies. His early research focused on computer mediated  communication, extending psychological theories of conversation to develop new accounts of online interaction. That work led to the design of novel collaboration, messaging and social computing technologies some which have now become standard. He has also researched Personal information management. He co-published a book with Ofer Bergman: The Science of Managing Our Digital Stuff which uses cognitive psychology to understand how we organize and access our personal digital information. He was also one of the first to document how email contributes to information overload, proposing technical approaches to address this. More recently his work examined 'digital memory', critiquing Lifelogging  approaches and developing new techniques for understanding and reflecting on our pasts. Awards. ACM Fellow (2015). ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Research Award (2014). ACM SIGCHI Academy (2008). ACM CSCW Lasting Impact Award (2018). Editor, Human Computer Interaction (2013–present)