Neha Kumar

I am an Associate Professor at Georgia Tech, where I am jointly appointed at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and the School of Interactive Computing. I work at the intersection of human-centered computing and global development, and have been awarded the NSF CAREER for my research. I was trained in computer science, design, and ethnography at UC Berkeley and Stanford University. This training shapes my work, which engages participatory, assets-based approaches towards technology design for/with communities that have historically been underserved. 

I obtained my Ph.D. in 2013 from UC Berkeley’s School of Information, specializing in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). This was after my Master’s degrees at Stanford University in Computer Science and Learning, Design, and Technology. I also worked at Microsoft Corp. for two years as a software design engineer on the MS Office/Powerpoint team. Before all that, I was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, where I double-majored in Computer Science and Applied Math, and volunteered actively for Asha for Education, an education non-profit.

Months before the culmination of my Ph.D., I joined as Research Associate the University of Washington, where I was mentored by Profs. Richard Anderson and Gaetano Borriello in Computer Science and Engineering. I was also at USC’s Annenberg School of Communication as a postdoctoral researcher. Many schools and many mascots, but I remain loyal to the California bear <3.

At Georgia Tech, I lead the Tandem Lab, where we aim to work with individuals, communities, and other stakeholders to inform the design and adoption of computing technologies in marginal contexts. Much of our research is focused on health and wellbeing, centering topics such as the future of work, data, gender, stigma, and knowledge production (read our work). Prior and current Tandem Lab students are committed to changing the world—at inspirit to continue the work we started on virtual reality and learning, and at MakerGhat towards fostering community knowledge networks in under-resourced parts of Mumbai, India.

I am passionate about community-building, and this is what much of my role as President of SIGCHI entails—strengthening our ties as a global HCI community and expanding participation globally. As former Chair of ACM’s Future of Computing Academy (ACM FCA), I led a group of committed computer scientists from across the world, aiming to maximize the impact of computing. As part of my FCA activity, I also came to co-host the X4D Talks, a monthly speaker series aimed at bringing speakers to present diverse takes on a topic of common interest across research/practice communities and disciplines that examine computing and development (or “4D”), e.g., the Future of Work (in February 2021) and Sustainability and Development (in March 2021). I have also been an active organizer and proponent of the HCI Across Borders event series since co-founding it in 2015, which has aimed to promote across-borders collaboration in HCI through the years.

You can find me on Twitter and Medium.