Per Ola Kristensson

Per Ola Kristensson is a Professor of Interactive Systems Engineering in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He is the co-founder and co-director of the Cambridge Centre for Human-Inspired Artificial Intelligence, focusing on designing intelligent interactive systems that enhance human creativity, expression, and satisfaction. Together with his collaborators, he invented the gesture keyboard technology and co-founded ShapeWriter, a company that commercialized this invention. His gesture input method has become the default input technique on most mobile devices and is increasingly adopted in virtual reality and augmented reality interfaces. Additionally, he has received several prestigious international academic awards, such as the ACM UIST Lasting Impact Award and the Royal Society of Edinburgh Early Career Award for Physical Sciences.

• 2014–Present·Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge·Professor of Interactive Systems Engineering
  • Leads the Intelligent Interactive Systems research group, specializing in human-computer interaction, virtual and augmented reality, accessibility design, and related fields.
• 2011–2014·University of St Andrews·Lecturer
  • Taught and conducted research on interactive technologies in the School of Computer Science.
• 2008–2011·University of Cambridge (Darwin College)·Junior Research Fellow
  • Conducted postdoctoral research in the field of human-computer interaction.
• 2007–2010·ShapeWriter, Inc.·Director of Engineering
  • Involved in the commercialization of gesture keyboard technology; the company was later acquired by Nuance Communications.

• 2003–2007·Linköping University·PhD
  • Focused on computer science with a dissertation on gesture keyboard technology.
• 2001–2002·IBM Almaden Research Center·Doctoral Research
  • Conducted collaborative doctoral research at IBM Research Center in San Jose, California, USA.