iConference 2011 Keynote Speakers

Click here to read a transcript of the keynote address delivered by Susan Dumais.

This year’s keynote speakers embody the focal elements of people, information, and technology--one from the perspective of the humanities and academia, the other from sciences and industry. Susan Dumais is a behavioral scientist who has been a major contributor in the field of Information Retrieval. Historian Colin Burke has studied the documentalists and technologists who gave rise to Information Science. With insight spanning the field's past, present, and future possibilities, their remarks are sure to provoke lively discussion in Seattle.

Susan Dumais

Susan Dumais is a Principal Researcher and manager of the Context, Learning and User Experience for Search (CLUES) Group at Microsoft Research. She has been at Microsoft Research since 1997 and has published widely in the areas of human-computer interaction and information retrieval. Her current research focuses on the temporal dynamics of information systems, user modeling and personalization, novel interfaces for interactive retrieval, and implicit measures of user interest and activity. Susan has published more than 200 articles in the fields of information science, human-computer interaction, and cognitive science, and holds several patents on novel retrieval algorithms and interfaces. She is Past-Chair of ACM's Special Interest Group in Information Retrieval (SIGIR), and served on the NRC Committee on Computing and Communications Research to Enable Better Use of Information Technology in Digital Government, and the NRC Board on Assessment of NIST Programs. She is on the editorial boards of ACM: Transactions on Information Systems, ACM: Transactions on Human Computer Interaction, Human Computer Interaction, Information Processing and Management, Information Retrieval, New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia, and the Annual Review of Information Science and Technology. She is an associate editor for the first and second editions of the Handbook of Applied Cognition, and serves on several program and advisory committees. She was elected to the CHI Academy in 2005, an ACM Fellow in 2006, and received the SIGIR Gerard Salton Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2009.

Colin B. Burke

UPDATE: Due to an unexpected health emergency, Colin Burke will be unable to join us. Colin is resting comfortably at home.

Colin B. Burke is an historian and the author of several fascinating books and case studies, including “Information and Secrecy: Vannevar Bush, Ultra, and the Other Memex” and “The Secret in Building 26,” which describe little-known, previously classified events at a crucial time in the development of Information Science. In 2007 he published “History of Information Science” in the Annual Review of Information Science and Technology. After twenty years as a professional musician, backing some of the great singers of the 20th century, he became a professor of history at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where he has been for more than 30 years. He has had Fulbright, Chemical Heritage Foundation, and Yale research fellowships, and has been a scholar in residence and lecturer at the National Security Agency.