Biography
Joanna McGrenere is a Co-Head and Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia (UBC, Canada) and recently completed a five year Inria & Université of Paris Saclay International Research Chair (France). Joanna received a PhD from the University of Toronto in 2002, an MSc from UBC in 1996, and a BSc from Western University in 1993, all in Computer Science. Her broad research area is Human Computer Interaction (HCI), with a specialization in interface personalization, universal usability, assistive technology, and computer supported cooperative work.
She often serves on the program and organizing committees for the top conferences in HCI, including serving as the overall Technical Program Co-Chair for CHI 2020, the Program Co-Chair for ASSETS 2018, and the Papers Co-Chair for CHI 2015. She is a member of the editorial board for ACM Transactions on Computer-Human-Interaction (ToCHI) and ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS). Joanna won a UBC Killam Research Prize (2024), is an ACM Distinguished Member (2022), an elected Member of the College of New Scholars in the Royal Society of Canada (2017), a Microsoft Research Software Engineering Innovation Foundation award (2013), a UBC Killam award for Excellence in Mentoring (2012), an Outstanding Young Computer Science Research Award from the Canadian Association of Computer Science (2011), was appointed as a Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies Early Career Scholar (2010), and was the first recipient of the Computing Research Association Women (CRA-W) Anita Borg Early Career Scholar Award (2004).
Joanna kickstarted and led the HCI@UBC initiative: an interdisciplinary meeting for scholars working in the area of Human-Computer Interaction across UBC campus (2013-15) which has been rebranded as the Designing for People (DFP) initiative (2016 - 2024). She served as Curriculum Lead for the NSERC CREATE DFP graduate enrichment program (2017- 2024). DFP was recognized as a top research cluster at UBC.