Title: World Lab: Inventing the Future Today Abstract There are many urgent problems facing the planet: a degrading environment, a healthcare system in crisis, and educational systems that are inadequately training creative, innovative thinkers to solve the problems of tomorrow. A balanced approach is required to solve these problems: a balance between design and technology, a balance between human-centered and technology-centered approaches, and a balance between different world cultures and ways of thinking. What if we could reduce a family’s energy and water use by 50%? What if we could improve everyone’s physical fitness and reduce mental illness by 50%? What if we could educate any child, anywhere in the world, to perform at the level of the best students in the world today, while ensuring these children excel at innovative thinking? A research program that solves these grand challenges must include a new model of interdisciplinary research that takes a long view and encourages risk taking and creativity, while not being distracted by the incremental approaches that are encouraged by today’s funding and publication models. A truly interdisciplinary institute can both attack the most important problems the world faces today as well as help produce the research leaders of tomorrow. Bio James Landay is the Short-Dooley Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, specializing in human-computer interaction. He is also the co-founder of the dub group at the University of Washington. From 2003 through 2006 he was also the Laboratory Director of Intel Labs Seattle, a university affiliated research lab exploring ubiquitous computing. His current research interests include Automated Usability Evaluation, Demonstrational Interfaces, Mobile & Ubiquitous Computing, User Interface Design Tools, and Web Design. He spent his 2009-2011 sabbatical at Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing, where he was also a Visiting Professor in the Computer Science Department of Tsinghua University. Landay received his B.S. in EECS from UC Berkeley in 1990 and M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1993 and 1996, respectively. His Ph.D. dissertation was the first to demonstrate the use of sketching in user interface design tools. He was also the chief scientist and co-founder of NetRaker. In 1997 he joined the faculty in EECS at UC Berkeley, leaving as an Associate Professor in 2003. He was named to the ACM SIGCHI Academy in 2011.
