Leading Chapters, Conferences, and Awards on the SIGCHI Executive Committee
The new SIGCHI Executive Committee’s term began on July 1, 2024. According to the SIGCHI bylaws, eight officers are elected, four vice-presidents are appointed, and additional adjunct chairs may be appointed based on roles and responsibilities to be fulfilled. The past president, in our case Helena Mentis, also serves as an officer on the EC.
We have begun making appointments for various non-elected roles. In this post, we introduce you to our Vice-President for Chapters, our Conferences team that includes a Vice-President and two Adjunct Chairs for Conferences, and an Adjunct Chair for Awards. These include three members who are essentially continuing the charge they took on in the final months of the previous EC: Jeni Paay, Matt Jones, and Niklas Elmqvist. We additionally welcome two Adjunct Chairs for Conferences who will be helping oversee our extensive and growing conferences portfolio: Ignacio Avellino and Jerry Alan Fails.
Read below to learn — in their words — who they are and what they aspire to achieve in their new/continuing roles. Read further to learn why we consider them so well-suited for these roles and are delighted to see them serve. And stay tuned for open calls to be posted soon.
Jeni Paay, Vice-President for Chapters
Bio: Professor Jeni Paay is a leading international researcher in Human Centred Computing. She is Professor of Interaction Design at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. She is also Director of the Centre for Design Innovation in the School of Design + Architecture at Swinburne. Jeni has a transdisciplinary background spanning architecture, computer science, and Human-Computer Interaction. Her research areas include: Design Methods; Interaction Design for Mobiles, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality; Digital Health; Interaction Design for Smart Spaces; Design for Digital Workspaces, Generative AI and Design and User Experience Design.
Vision: I want to see chapters and regions established across the globe so that anyone who wishes to be part of SIGCHI, having an interest in HCI, anywhere on earth, has the opportunity to join a local chapter or region or topic area that is relevant to them, to become part of a community. I would like to see chapters that sit in a region collaborating and sharing events — and this may well take a formal organisation of established regions of the world within which chapters sit, so that chapters understand the need to share events remotely with other chapters in their region. From the point of becoming a non-affiliated chapter or region member — I would hope that individuals would see the value of joining ACM SIGCHI as fee-paying members.
Matt Jones, Vice-President for Conferences
Bio: Matt Jones is an EPSRC Research Fellow at the Computational Foundry, Swansea University where he is working on AI that will enable people’s souls to sing. He is also the Chief Operating Officer of the UK’s Responsible AI programme (rai.ac.uk) and a member of the UK Govt’s Foreign Office Research Advisory Group. He has been a part of the SIGCHI family for many years and has previously been VP Chapters, a member of the CHI and Mobile HCI Steering Committees and co-General Chair of CHI2014.
Vision: Conferences are the places where researchers and practitioners come together to share, debate and connect world-leading contributions that ultimately will help make the world a better place. Conferences are much more than “events” — they are communities of committed volunteers, authors and attendees who work year-round to nurture talent and ideas. As VP Conferences, my vision is to see this rich portfolio networked in visible and vibrant ways, sharing best practice, supporting each other and being a stronger, integrated, purposeful and joyful force. Being a conference volunteer is a highly rewarding act of service and I will work to encourage a diverse set of new talents to join us so they can become the future of SIGCHI. Together, we will work to address the challenging landscape of changing publication models, new modalities of participation and sustainability.
Ignacio Avellino, Adjunct Chair for Conferences
Bio: Ignacio Avellino is a tenured researcher (Chargé de Recherche) at the CNRS, working at Sorbonne Université (Paris, France), ISIR lab. His research is in the field of HCI, at the crossroads of interaction design, remote collaboration (CSCW) and human learning, applied to healthcare — in particular surgery. In the past, he has served for SIGCHI conferences in various roles, including at CHI, CSCW, and UIST. He was an Early Career Researcher on the CHI Steering Committee before joining the EC, and served as General Chair of IHM ’24 (an ACM SIGCHI in-cooperation conference).
Vision: The future I would like to enable is one that blends the rich history of SIGCHI conferences as a hub for networking, science and innovation, with a transformative approach to financial sustainability. For the past three terms, the SIGCHI EC has established values of inclusivity, accessibility and diversity across the family of SIGCHI conferences, which is something that should continue and be fostered. Concurrently, I will work as part of the VP Conferences team to understand how each conference can achieve financial sustainability, and then support conference leadership in achieving that goal. This may include restructuring the conference format, revisiting costs and revenue, adapting to ACM OPEN, as well as revisiting the portfolio of SIGCHI conferences. Together, we will honor the SIGCHI conferences legacy while building a vibrant and sustainable future.
Jerry Alan Fails, Adjunct Chair for Conferences
Bio: Jerry Alan Fails is a Professor and the Incoming Chair of the Department of Computer Science at Boise State University in Boise, Idaho (USA). He has been a member of the SIGCHI community for more than twenty years serving as steering committee chair for the Interaction Design and Children Conference (IDC), as general conference chair (IDC), and on several program committees (CHI & IDC, and many other conferences).
Vision: Research quality and vibrant community are hallmarks of great conferences. My vision is to support conferences as they work to maintain those ideals. This includes finding ways to collaborate and share the wealth of knowledge of those who have successfully contributed to and led conferences. Additionally, we need to work together to identify and critically assess how we can strengthen, streamline, and responsibly sustain the valuable efforts of all volunteers and authors.
Niklas Elmqvist, Adjunct Chair for Awards
Bio: Niklas Elmqvist is a professor of computer science at Aarhus University in Aarhus, Denmark. He received his Ph.D. in computer science in 2006 from Chalmers University in Gothenburg, Sweden. His research area is data visualization, human-computer interaction, and human-centered AI. He is the recipient of a Villum Investigator award (2023) and an NSF CAREER (2013) award as well as several best paper and honorable mention awards. He was elevated to IEEE Fellow in 2024 and ACM Distinguished Scientist in 2018.
Vision: As the Adjunct Chair for Awards at SIGCHI, my vision for the future is to significantly expand our awards program, both in the number of awards and the breadth of awardees, ensuring that we recognize a diverse range of contributions across our field. To achieve this, we will prioritize increasing the diversity and equity of our award committees, ensuring a wide array of perspectives in our selection process. Additionally, we aim to elevate the visibility of our awardees’ work, leveraging various platforms to showcase their achievements and inspire the global community. This future will celebrate the richness of human-computer interaction research and foster a more inclusive and visible recognition of excellence.
All new members introduced above have shown tremendous dedication in their service to SIGCHI through the years, and we are delighted to have them alongside us in our shared mission of strengthening and nurturing the SIG and our communities across chapters and conferences. Although we typically recruit new members via open calls, we made exceptions for these few. Jeni Paay, Matt Jones, and Niklas Elmqvist were only recently onboarded — in the final months of the previous EC — to oversee chapters, conference engagement, and awards. We are delighted to see them continue as they remain committed to their charge.
To center our conferences and their — and the SIG’s — wellbeing, we have now set up a Conferences Wellbeing Team led by Matt as VP for Conferences, including Ignacio and Jerry as ACs for Conferences. All three were active participants at the SIGCHI Futures Summit earlier this year, where we spent three packed days discussing and reimagining various aspects of the organization and experience of our conferences. Together, Matt, Ignacio, and Jerry represent diverse HCI communities — conference-wise and region-wise, and will be contributing rich conference steering and organizing experience to the EC, including from CHI, MobileHCI, IDC, and more. In the coming weeks, Matt, Ignacio, and Jerry will meet to discuss their shared vision and distribution of conference-related tasks and responsibilities, after which the EC will host a SIGCHI Conferences Town Hall in early October, open to conference leaders and participants.
There are additional appointments to be made in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for our next round of open calls aiming to appoint the following: VPs for Publications and Operations, and ACs for Community Support and Sustainability.
