UCL Interaction Centre

UCLIC is the leading UK Centre of Excellence in Human-Computer Interaction, working collaboratively with industry and the research community and drawing on the best scientific traditions in Computer Science and Psychology. UCLIC is the only UK HCI Centre with formal interdisciplinary support. More information about UCLIC can be found in our 2008 Newsletter.

Current Opportunities

Applications are invited by 5 January 2010 for a post-doctoral Research Associate position studying the practices and values of professional stakeholders working on widely used interactive medical devices, to inform future design and policy changes. This post is part of the CHI+MED project. See the job announcement for the advert, further details, and how to apply. The post is funded for 30 months in the first instance.
Apply for a 3.5 year PhD studentship on the topic of understanding errors in the use of interactive medical devices, as part of the CHI+MED project. Please see the further information and instructions on how to apply. Closing date is 6 December 2009.
Apply now to do a PhD with us (through the Computer Science department, no deadline; through the Psychology department, by 31st January each year).

Apply now for a place on the MSc & Post Graduate Diploma/Certificate in Human-Computer Interaction with Ergonomics starting in September 2010. Contact uclic-admissions@ucl.ac.uk for more information, or telephone the Admissions Tutor Nadia Berthouze.

News

A team led by Ann Blandford -- along with co-applicants from the FIT lab at Swansea, the Department of Computer Science at Queen Mary, University of London, and the Centre for HCI Design at City University -- has been awarded £5,792,050 for an EPSRC Programme Grant entitled CHI+MED: Multidisciplinary Computer-Human Interaction research for the design and safe use of interactive medical devices. The programme grant is for 6 years from October 2009, and will employ 3-4 researchers and 3 PhD students at UCLIC, along with similar numbers at Swansea and Queen Mary.
Comings & goings: Our teaching administrator Romy Beattie is now on maternity leave for a year, bearing our best wishes for the coming weeks & months. A warm welcome to Sally Watson who joins us from LSE to cover Romy's duties while she's away.
Kyriakos Spiliotopoulos, a student on the MSc HCI-E course, has been presented with an award for coming second in the competition for the UCL Union Student Employee of the Year. Well done, Kyriakos!
Nadia Berthouze is one of the team awarded an EPSRC "Sandpit" grant for a project on Digital Sensoria: Design through digital perceptual experience. The project is led by University of the Arts London, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. UCLIC's share is £177,024, and will employ an RA for 18 months.
Congratulations to Charlene Jennett, who won third place in the CHI 2009 Student Research Competition.
Comings & goings: We say hello to Chris Janssen who joins us as a PhD student from the U of Groningen. Chris will be working with Duncan Brumby on modelling how people (e.g. drivers) adapt their strategies in multitask environments. We also welcome Enzian Baur, who joined us in February as a researcher working with Anna Cox and Jennifer Rode on a KTP project with Paperstone.
Kimberley Kelley Hiltz, an MSc student at UCLIC 2006-7, is awarded the 2009 Ulf Aberg Prize of the Ergonomics Society for her MSc thesis entitled An exploration of internal cues to reduce omission errors in a procedural task.
Stephann Makri has won a one-year ESRC post-doctoral award.
Three UCLIC former students have recently been awarded their PhDs. Congratulations to Dr Dominic Furniss, Dr Sarah Faisal, and Dr Stephann Makri!
A UCLIC team led by Ann Blandford, together with the FIT lab at Swansea, was awarded an EPSRC Platform Grant entitled Healthy Interactive Systems in Healthcare. The grant is for 5 years from February 2009, with the UCLIC share being for £422,828.
The book Research Methods for Human Computer Interaction, edited by Paul Cairns and Anna Cox was published by Cambridge University Press.
WE HAVE MOVED!! Early in May 2008 we moved from Remax House to our new premises on the 8th floor of the Malet Place Engineering Building, in the same building as Computer Science. For the first time, all of UCLIC are together in one place, and we look forward to the benefits of being co-located with one of our parent departments. (Also, the views from the 8th floor windows are stupendous.) Please see the how-to-find-us page for details of our new location, address, etc.