Wendy E Mackay

Wendy Elizabeth Mackay is a Research Director, Classe Exceptionnelle (DR0), at Inria, a rank equivalent to a tenured full professorship. She is also a Professor Attaché at Université Paris-Saclay. She directs ex)situ, a joint Human-Computer Interaction research group involving Inria, LISN/CNRS, and Université Paris-Saclay, and teaches in the university’s international HCI master’s program. Her research covers human-computer partnerships, co-adaptive systems, tangible computing and interactive paper, mediated communication, and multidisciplinary participatory design methods. She emphasizes keeping expert users in control of their interaction with technology and is exploring systems in which human users and intelligent systems share agency.

She joined Inria in 2000 and led the InSitu (2002–2014) and ex)situ (2015–present) research groups. She served as Vice President of Research for the Computer Science Department at Université de Paris-Sud (now within the Université Paris-Saclay system) from 2007 to 2010 and was a Visiting Professor in Stanford University’s Computer Science Department from 2010 to 2012. She has served as Chair of ACM/SIGCHI, General Chair of CHI 2013, and recipient of an ERC Advanced Grant.

• 2002–present·Inria·Research Director, Classe Exceptionnelle (DR0); head of the InSitu and ex)situ research groups
• 2000–2002·Inria·Spécialiste (researcher)
• 1998–2000·Aarhus University·Professor, Department of Computer Science
• 1997·Université de Paris-Sud·Professeur Associée
• 1996–1997·Centre d'Études de la Navigation Aérienne·Senior Researcher
• 1991–1995·Rank Xerox EuroPARC·Senior Research Scientist; manager of the multimedia research group
• 1987–1990·Digital Equipment Corporation·GEEP Fellow (scholarship fellow completing the MIT Ph.D.)
• 1983–1986·Digital Equipment Corporation·Research and Development Manager, Educational Services
• 1982–1983·Digital Equipment Corporation·Cost Center Manager, Systems Based Courseware
• 1981–1982·Digital Equipment Corporation·Unit Manager, Systems Based Courseware
• 1979–1980·Digital Equipment Corporation·Educational Specialist, Systems Based Courseware

• 1990·Massachusetts Institute of Technology·Ph.D., Management of Technological Innovation
• 1979·Northeastern University·M.A., Experimental Psychology
• 1977·University of California, San Diego·B.A., Experimental Psychology

• 2024 | ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Research Award
• 2021–2022 | Annual Chair for Computer Science, Collège de France
• 2020 | Suffrage Science Award in Mathematics and Computing
• 2019 | ACM Fellow
• 2017 | Doctor Honoris Causa, Faculty of Science, Aarhus University
• 2014 | ACM/SIGCHI Lifetime Service Award; promoted to Classe Exceptionnelle at Inria
• 2013–2019 | European Research Council Advanced Grant on creating co-adaptive human-computer partnerships
• Current | Member of the ACM CHI Academy

• ex)situ profile, full CV (January 2024), Collège de France biography, and ACM SIGCHI 2024 Lifetime Research Award page.
• Public-source verification date: 2026-09-23 (Asia/Shanghai).