Vanessa Evers

I am the Director of the Institute for Science and Technology for Humanity and full professor of Computer Science at Nanyang technological University in Singapore .

I am also a Professor of Human Media Interaction at the University of Twente and Founder of the DesignLab at the University of Twente. I have an M.SC. in Information Systems (now renamed Data Science) from the University of Amsterdam, and a Ph. D. in Computer Science from the Open University, UK.

My research focuses on the complex interaction between people and intelligent and autonomous systems such as robots and socio-cultural aspects of Human Computer Interaction. This comprises the entire cycle of automatic detection of multi-modal behaviour of people, designing socially normative behaviour for AI agents and evaluating the impact on how people live, work and play.

I am active in the HRI, CSCW and CHI communities and I teach courses such as Human Computer Interaction, Computer Mediated Communication, Global Work, Multimedia and Research methods courses.

Bio

Vanessa Evers is a full professor of Computer Science at the University of Twente’s Human Media Interaction group and Director of the DesignLab for multidisciplinary research. She received a M.SC. in Information Systems from the University of Amsterdam, and a Ph. D. from the Open University, UK. During her Master studies she spent two years at the Institute of Management Information Studies of the University of New South Wales, Sydney. After her Ph.D. she has worked for the Boston Consulting Group, London and later became an assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam’s  Institute of Informatics. She was a visiting researcher at Stanford University (2005-2007). Her research interests focus on on interaction with intelligent and autonomous systems such as robots or machine learning systems as well as cultural aspects of Human Computer Interaction. She has published over 80 peer reviewed publications, many of which in high quality journals and conferences in human computer interaction and human robot interaction. She serves on Program Committees of ACM/IEEE HRI, ACM SIGCHI, HSI, ACM CSCW and ACM Multimedia. Vanessa is frequently interviewed about her work on national public tv, newspapers or magazines. She won the best thesis prize awarded by the Dutch National Society of Registered Information Specialists, was co-author of the James Chen best paper award of the journal on User Modeling and User Adapted Interaction together with then her Ph.D. student Henriette Cramer. She holds the 2014 Opzij talent award. Vanessa is an editor for the International Journal of Social Robotics, she is co-chair of the ACM International Human Robot Interaction Steering Committee and Associate Editor of the Human Robot Interaction Journal.

Education

Doctorate: October 1997 – October 2001
The Institute of Educational Technology – Open University
Title of thesis: Cultural Aspects of User Interface Understanding: An empirical Evaluation of an E-learning Website by International User Groups. Advisors: prof. dr. Ann Jones and dr. Agnes Kukulska-Hulme.

Master’s: September 1992 – October 1997
Business Information Systems, University of Amsterdam.
Included 1 year exchange studentship and 1 year MSc research project at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Title of thesis: Cultural Aspects of User Interface Understanding Advisor: dr. Donald Day.

CV

Professional Appointments

Full Professor: August 2019-now. Computer Science Department, School of Computer Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Director: August 2019-now. NTU Institute of Science and Technology for Humanity. Singapore

Vice-Dean: Faculty EEMCS, University of Twente (June 2018-June 2022)

Member of Supervisory Board, Open University: December 2015-December 2019.

Scientific Director: September 2014 – Now. DesignLab, University of Twente, the Netherlands The DesignLab is a creative and cross-disciplinary ecosystem at the University of Twente, connecting science and society through design. Faculty and students from various disciplines work together with companies and governments on societal challenges, inspired by novel scientific insights.

Full Professor and Chair: September 2011 – Now. Human Media Interaction group, University of Twente, the Netherlands.                                                                                                           The Human Media Interaction (HMI) group is part of the Computer Science Department and consists of about 14 staff and 26 PhD students. The focus of the group is on intelligent multimodal human-computer interaction. HMI has a proven track record of participating in multidisciplinary EU research projects and publishing in high end academic conferences and journals. The University of Twente (UT) employs 3300 staff and has 9000 students. It is part of the 3TU federation together with the technical universities of Eindhoven and Delft. The CTIT (Centre for Telematics and Information Technology) of the University of Twente is one of the largest academic ICT research institutes in Europe with over 475 researchers. A clear focus of CTIT is the integration of technology-based research and its application in specific domains.

Assistant Professor: February 2007 – August 2011. Human Computer Studies Lab, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Intelligent Systems Lab Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Visiting Scholar: September 2008. Department of Industrial Design, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.

Visiting Scholar: August 2005 – January 2007, CSLI, HCI lab, CHIME lab, Persuasive technology lab, Computational Learning lab, Stanford University, CA, USA.

Assistant Professor: Aug 2002 – Aug 2005. Sociaal Wetenschappelijke Informatica, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Human Computer Studies Lab, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Boston Consulting Group: November 2000-November 2001. Usability lead, Boston Consulting group, London, UK. (BCG’s worldwide usability practice, International Localisation expert, third party systems integrator management, human factors research and client case work)

Self employment: September 1998 – November 2002.
Self employed, Milton Keynes, UK. (expert reviews for instance for the Nielsen Norman group, usability studies, human factors research, website localisation)

Other: 

September 1996 -September 1997
Contract research staff, University of New South Wales, Sydney. (Develop course material, assist teaching and research)

May 1995 -August 1995
Project work, Koninklijke Wegenbouw Stevin, Utrecht, the Netherlands. (Developed a geographical Information tool for planning and executing roadwork in inner city Utrecht.