New Assistant Professor Edward Lank has been on both sides of the computer science divide, having worked in both the private and academic sectors. He has served as Chief Technical Officer at Canadian startup MediaShell, as a researcher at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, and on the faculty of San Francisco State University. Although he officially joins the faculty full-time in June 2006, he has taken a semester's sabbatical to come here this fall as a Research Assistant Professor.
An expert in human-computer interaction, Prof. Lank specializes in improving the usability of hand-stylus interfaces, making tablet computers easier to use. Working on the software end, he asks, given a certain piece of hardware, how can we improve the software to use in situations as replacement for pad and pen. Prof. Lank was recently awarded the National Science Foundation's Career Award, its "most prestigious award for early faculty career development". In addition, he has two patents pending, both for novel methods to help tablet computers infer user intention from physical gestures. "The idea is to add intelligence to user interface, so it meets the user halfway."
You can learn more about Professor Lank by visiting his home page.
2005 Sep 06
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
Tel: 519-888-4567 x33293
Fax: 519-885-1208
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Last modified: Tuesday, 24-Oct-2006 14:37:22 EDT
