Prof. Ahmed was the opening keynote speaker at PDC 2024 in Malaysia. PDC is one of the premier international conferences for participatory design research, so this speaking opportunity highlights Prof. Ahmed’s significant contributions to this research area. You can find more about this year’s conference and all of the keynote speakers on the conference’s website.

Adjunct Prof. Paul Dietz was featured by the Department of Computer Science for his work on an Animatronics Workshop. This workshop is a capstone course designed to encourage undergraduate students to explore how computer-based systems can bring stories to life in K-12 classrooms. You can learn more about this exciting and engaging program in the department’s news article.

Congratulations to Prof. Ahmed and Prof. Chevalier on receiving tenure! More information on their promotions can be found here.

DGP had a whopping 32 papers accepted to CHI 2024, the premier conference for human-computer interaction research. These papers spanned various topics including AR/VR interaction, health tracking, community support systems, algorithmic fairness, and yes, LLMs. You can find the full list of papers in this article.

Otman Benchekroun led the creation of the first DGP Academy, which offers high school students the opportunity to engage in hands-on computer graphics activities and get a comprehensive view of graduate studies. Students learned about topics ranging from 3D printing to linear algebra and calculus. You can learn more about the event here: https://web.cs.toronto.edu/news-events/news/dgp-academy-high-school-students-outreach.

Congratulations to Prof. Buxton, who has been appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada for his work in HCI and user-centred design! Prof. Buxton has been a member of the DGP since the early years of the group and has published and collaborated with students and faculty here in the decades since. There is a great write-up of Bill’s history with the department and DGP on the Computer Science website and the official announcement of his appointment on the Governor General’s page.

The Faculty of Arts & Science has named Kyros Kutulakos as a recipient of this year’s Dean’s Research Excellence Award! You can read more about the award and his contributions here.

Ishtiaque Ahmed has received a 2023 Google Award for Inclusion Research for his work on making computing services useful and meaningful for rural communities in the Global South! You can read more about the award and his work here.

Fanny Chevalier has been made a knight in the prestigious Order of Academic Palms (l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques), France’s national order recognizing exemplary services to education and culture. Coincidentally, her last name translates to “knight” in French, so this was destined to happen. You can read more about the award and her contributions here.

The Adaptive Experimentation Accelerator team, led by University of Toronto Assistant Professor Joseph Jay Williams, has won the $500,000 (USD) grand prize in the XPRIZE Digital Learning Challenge, a global competition to modernize, accelerate, and improve the identification of effective learning tools and processes. The team also includes graduate students Ilya Musabirov, Mohi Reza, Pan Chen, and Harsh Kumar, as well as collaborators from Carnegie Mellon University and North Carolina State University. Learn more about the team, the competition, and their project in this article.