Short bio
Dr Elizabeth Churchill is a Director of User Experience at Google, the Executive Vice President of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), a member of the ACM’s CHI Academy, and an ACM Distinguished Scientist and Distinguished Speaker. With a background in psychology (neuro, experimental, cognitive and social), Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science, for the past 20 years she has drawn on social, computer, engineering and data sciences to create innovative end-user applications and services. She has built research teams at Google, eBay, Yahoo, PARC and FujiXerox. She holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, an honorary Doctor of Science (DSc.) from the University of Sussex, and in September will be awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Stockholm. In 2016 she received a Citris-Banatao Institute Award Athena Award for Women in Technology for her Executive Leadership.
Some more details
I am currently a Director of User Experience at Google in Mountain View, California. In addition to my role at Google, I am the Executive Vice President of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM). I am an ACM Distinguished Scientist and Distinguished Speaker. I write a regular column for ACM interactions magazine.
I am on the advisory board for a number of university departments and am very honored to be a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Stanford University’s Media X, the industry affiliate program to Stanford’s H-STAR Institute.
In terms of my research, I am an applied social scientist, interactive technology designer and social communications researcher. I have a background in psychology (neuro, experimental, cognitive and social), Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science. For the past 20+ years I have drawn on social, computer, engineering and data sciences to create innovative end-user applications and services. For the past few years, I have been most active in the areas of ubiquitous and mobile computing, social media, computer mediated communication, locative media and Internet/Web sciences. During this time, I have designed and evaluated enterprise and consumer-facing information/communication applications and services for desktop, mobile, tablet and large screen devices. I have also worked on infrastructure design for collaborative workflow systems and for Internet-based applications and services. Having worked in the UK, the US, and Asia, I am particularly interested in understanding how technical, cultural and social factors affect the ways in which people do (or do not) communicate and collaborate.
I have worked in academia and in industry in various roles–as an individual contributor, in management and in a consultancy capacity. My past affiliations include eBay Research Labs. (eRL), Yahoo! Research, PARC, and Fuji Xerox’s research lab in Palo Alto, FXPAL. As well as building successful multidisciplinary technology innovation teams and advising on corporate strategy, I have continued to be active in research. I have conducted ethnographic design research, designed and managed field-based prototype/system trials, and run laboratory and field-based experiments. A number of technologies that I have designed with my collaborators have been launched as prototypes and/or products. Most recently, I have been exploring the notions of data aware design and experience mining.
My personal interests include film, photography and snowboarding. I can persuaded to ride a bicycle now and then. Although I love to travel, my physical instantiation is usually in San Francisco.
You can find out more about me on my LinkedIn page.
Contact: Email me at (my first name) (at) (this domain)
