Dr. Andrew Sears is a professor and Dean of Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies. Dr. Sears’ research explores issues related to human-centered computing and accessibility. His research projects have addressed issues associated with mobile computing, health information technologies, speech recognition, and assessing an individual’s cognitive status via normal daily interactions with information technologies. Dr. Sears’ research has been supported by various industry leaders, government agencies, and foundations, including IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Motorola, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the Verizon Foundation.
Dr. Sears was a founding Editor-in-Chief of the Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM) Transactions on Accessible Computing. He has also served on the editorial boards of ACM’s Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, and other journals. He served as Conference and Technical Program Co-Chair of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2001) and both General Chair and Program Chair for the ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2004 and ASSETS 2005). Dr. Sears also served as the Chair of the ACM Special Interest Group on Accessible Computing, as a member of the ACM Council, and on the Board of Directors of the Computing Research Association. He was named an ACM Distinguished Scientist in 2010. Dr. Sears earned his bachelor of science degree in computer science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and his Ph.D. in computer science with an emphasis on human-computer interaction from the University of Maryland – College Park.
