Ted Selker
Edwin Joseph Selker | |
|---|---|
| Born | United States |
| Other names | Ted Selker |
| Occupation(s) | Computer scientist, researcher, professor |
| Years active | 1981–present |
| Known for | User interface design, context awareness, TrackPoint technology |
Edwin Joseph Selker, commonly referred to as Ted Selker, is an American expert in computer science acclaimed for his advancements in user interface design.
Biography
Selker obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Applied Mathematics from Brown University in 1979, followed by a Master of Science in Computer and Information Sciences from University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1981. Between 1981 and 1983, he served as a research assistant at Stanford University's Robotics Laboratory, where he contributed to the development of a collaborative display system for the WAITS operating environment at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL). After spending a year working at Atari and teaching at Stanford, he joined IBM in 1985 at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center. He earned his doctoral degree from City University of New York in 1992, focusing his dissertation on proactive adaptive computer assistance.
At IBM's Almaden Research Center, Selker established and directed the User Systems Ergonomics Research laboratory. He was honored as an IBM Fellow in 1996 and holds 67 United States patents, including those related to the pointing stick technology (TrackPoint) that is a key feature of IBM's ThinkPad laptops, now manufactured by Lenovo.
In 1999, Selker became part of the MIT Media Lab, where he led the Context Aware Computing group and managed initiatives such as The Voting Technology Project and Design Intelligence. In 2008, he joined Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley, contributing to the launch of its PhD program and heading the Considerate Systems group. From June through August 2011, he took on the role of Director of Research at Scanadu, a start-up focused on creating smartphone-based medical monitoring tools.
Selker has held teaching positions at several academic institutions including Stanford University, Hampshire College, and Brown University, and has provided consulting services for Xerox PARC. His research emphasizes cutting-edge prototype development supported by cognitive science principles within human-computer interaction.
As an innovator in the field of context awareness, Selker’s inventions have been showcased on prominent media platforms such as Good Morning America, the Wall Street Journal, BBC, NPR, and the Discovery Channel. He was recognized with the Scientific American 50 award for leadership in computer science policy in 2004 and received the Thomas Paine award from the American Association for People with Disabilities in 2006 for his contributions to voting technology.
He advocates for an innovation approach driven by crowdsourcing known as Excubation.
Selker is married and has two children.
External links
- Articles with short description
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- Year of birth missing (living people)
- Living people
- American computer scientists
- Human–computer interaction
- Human–computer interaction researchers
- IBM Fellows
- Brown University alumni
- University of Massachusetts Amherst alumni
- University of Massachusetts Amherst faculty
- Atari people