Mark Ackerman Named ACM Fellow

Prof. Mark Ackerman, George Herbert Mead Collegiate Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and in the School of Information, has been elected a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) “for contributions to human computer interaction, with an emphasis on finding and sharing expertise.”

Professor Ackerman’s research discoveries have been in human-computer interaction, primarily in the sub-field of computer-supported cooperative work. He has made fundamental contributions in the areas of knowledge-sharing, expertise finding, organizational memory, collaborative information access, and socio-technical analysis.

Professor Ackerman is best known for his research on how people share expertise and knowledge within organizations and other social groups. He developed and evaluated Answer Garden, one of the first computer-based systems for locating and sharing expertise. Prof. Ackerman’s Answer Garden papers are widely regarded as landmark works in CSCW, and as a whole, have been cited over 1000 times. Since the work incorporated social networks into expertise sharing, it has been acknowledged as foreshadowing later developments in social computing.

At Michigan, Prof. Ackerman leads the SocialWorlds Research Group, which focuses on the interplay of the social world with computational systems. Current projects are in the areas of social computing, information access, pervasive computing, health, privacy, and e-communities.

Prof. Ackerman received his PhD in Information Technologies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994.He joined the faculty at Michigan in 2001; prior to that he was a faculty member at the University of California, Irvine, and a research scientist at MIT’s Laboratory for Computer Science (now CSAIL). Before becoming an academic, Prof. Ackerman led the development of the first home banking system, had three Billboard Top-10 games for the Atari 2600, and worked on the X Window System’s first user-interface widget set. He was awarded an NSF CAREER Award in 2001. He is a member of the CHI Academy (HCI Fellow).

ACM press release: ACM Names Fellows for Computing Advances that Are Transforming Science and Society

About the ACM Fellows Program

The ACM Fellows Program was established in 1993 to recognize and honor outstanding ACM members for their achievements in computer science and information technology and for their significant contributions to the mission of the ACM. The ACM Fellows serve as distinguished colleagues to whom the ACM and its members look for guidance and leadership as the world of information technology evolves.