The Royal Society is a self-governing Fellowship made up of the most eminent scientists, engineers and technologists from around the world. Fellows and Foreign Members are elected for life through a peer review process, on the basis of excellence in science. The Royal Society is the oldest known scientific academy in continuous existence. Fellowship is a significant honour, which has been bestowed on distinguished individuals, such as Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Dorothy Hodgkin, Alan Turing, Lise Meitner, and Stephen Hawking.
Dr. Abigail Sellen is one of the most highly cited and influential scientists in the field of Human-Computer Interaction. Her distinguished career has spanned both academia and industrial research with many of the world’s leading technology companies, and her seminal contributions laid foundations for technologies used today by billions of people. She is world renowned for her pioneering work on video conferencing and teleworking, a field that has recently gained pivotal significance. Sellen is highly influential in the ethics of AI, and is a strong champion for multi-disciplinary research that ensures technology is human-centric.
After earning her MASc in Industrial Engineering at MIE, Dr. Sellen went on to complete her doctorate in Cognitive Science from the University of California, San Diego. She holds another connection to MIE; her stepfather, John Senders, was a former MIE IndE professor. Today, Dr. Sellen works as Deputy Director at Microsoft Research Cambridge in the United Kingdom. She has also held positions at Hewlett Packard Labs, Bristol, the Xerox research lab in Cambridge, was cross-appointed to the MRC Applied Psychology Unit at Cambridge, and was a Research Fellow at Darwin College, University of Cambridge.
