Professor Aaron Quigley received his BA(mod) in Computer Science from Trinity College Dublin in Ireland in 1995 and his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Newcastle in Australia in 2002. Aaron is now the Science Director and Deputy Director of CSIRO’s Data61. From 2020 – 2023 he was head of school for the School of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) in the University of New South Wales in Sydney Australia. He has published over 210 internationally peer-reviewed publications (see ORCID) including edited volumes, journal papers, book chapters, conference and workshop papers.
Aaron is an ACM Distinguished Member an IEEE Senior Member, and was a general co-chair for the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in 2021. He serves as chair elect on the ACM CHI Steering committee and serves on the Yirigaa Advisory Board. Aaron was the technical program Chair for EICS 2022.
Mardi Gras 2021
Aaron’s research interests include discreet computing, global HCI, pervasive and ubiquitous computing and information visualisation on which he has delivered over 50 invited talks and he is an ACM Distinguished Speaker. At the moment he currently supervises three PhD students, Yongquan Hu, Maheshya Weerasine (co-tutelle with Slovenia) and Mingye Yuan.
Aaron was a member of the ACM Europe Council Conferences Working Group and from 2015-2020 he served first as the ACM SIGCHI Adjunct Chair for specialised conferences and then the ACM SIGCHI Vice President for Conferences. From 2016-2017 Aaron was a convenor for the ACM Future of Computing Academy.
His research and development has been supported by the EPSRC, AHRC, JISC, SFC, NDRC, EU FP7/FP6, SFI, Smart Internet CRC, NICTA, Wacom, IBM, Intel, Nvidia, Google, Microsoft and MERL and has held 7 patents (1 Location Awareness, 2 Focus Awareness, 3 Antenna Design, 4 Recommender System, 5 Radar Object Detection, 6 Visual Object Detection, 7 Bluetooth Location Awareness)
. He has held academic and industry appointments in Singapore, Australia, Japan, USA, Germany, Ireland and the UK.
In total Aaron has had chairing roles in thirty international conferences and has served on over ninety conference and workshop program committees.
Until June 2020, Professor Aaron Quigley was the Chair of Human Computer Interaction in the School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews, director of the Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA), board member for ScotlandIS and the DataLab. During his time in Scotland (2010-2020) was co-founder of SACHI, the St Andrews Computer Human Interaction research group.
2010 – 2020: During this time Professor Aaron Quigley was the Chair of Human Computer Interaction in the School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews, and co-founder of SACHI, the St Andrews Computer Human Interaction research group. While in Scotland he served as director of the Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA), board member for ScotlandIS and the DataLab. While working in the University of St Andrews he served as deputy head of school, director of research, director of SACHI, teaching and research ethics committee member, knowledge exchange group committee member, Brexit preparedness group committee member, St Andrews Business Ventures group committee member and on the Science/Medicine promotions panel.
From 2019 – 2020 he was director of SICSA and from 2012 – 2014, he was the deputy director and director for knowledge exchange for SICSA. During his time as director of knowledge exchange in SICSA he developed a program of funding mechanisms for early career researchers and with industry submitted the Scottish Data Science Innovation Centre consortium registration. This led to the successful submission and funding of the DataLab. The DataLab is an £11.3 million innovation centre funded by the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) and with support from Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise. Aaron served on the board of the DataLab in 2014 and from 2012 – 2014 chaired the AspeKT board a project funded by SFC and Scottish Enterprise. AspeKT is the knowledge transfer program for the SICSA research pool supporting Scotland’s technology innovators and entrepreneurs. In late 2014 Aaron was elected to serve on the ScotlandIS board which is the trade body for the digital technologies industry in Scotland. Aaron was the inaugural editor-in-chief for the journal Computers from 2011 – 2015.
During his time in St Andrews he held the following conference organisation roles:
- ACM CHI 2021 General Co-Chair
- ACM MobileHCI Steering Committee Chair and member
- ACM IUI 2018 Program Co-Chair
- ACM MobileHCI 2016 Panels Co-Chair
- ACM UIST 2015 Keynote Chair
- ACM MobileHCI 2014 General Co-Chair
- ACM PerDis 2014 Program Chair
- ACM UIST 2013 General Co-Chair
- ACM ITS 2013 General Co-Chair
- ACM MobileHCI 2012 Tutorials Co-Chair
- HCI 2012 Short Papers Co-Chair
- Pervasive 2012 Doctoral Consortium Co-Chair
- Grid and Pervasive Computing 2011 Doctoral Consortium Co-Chair
- Dagstuhl Seminar 13452 Co-Organiser
- Dagstuhl Seminar 15052 Co-Organiser
His appointment in 2010 was part of SICSA, the Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance. Within SICSA he served as a theme leader for Multimodal Interaction (2011 to 2012), Deputy Director and Director of Knowledge Exchange from 2012 to 2014 and Director 2019 – 2020.
Some of his external service has including serving as program co-chair for ACM IUI in Tokyo Japan in 2018. Program chair for PerDis in 2014 and general co-chair for MobileHCI. In 2013 he was the general co-chair of the 26th ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 2013) and a general co-chair of the ACM Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces Conference (ITS 2013). He has served as an associate chair for the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) on five occasions.
Aaron was the Doctoral Colloquium Co Chair of Pervasive 2012, the Short Paper Co Chair of HCI 2012 and an Associate Chair of the ACM MobileHCI 2012 and 2013 Program Committees along with tutorials co-chair for the ACM MobileHCI 2012 conference. He has had chairing roles in thirty international conferences and has served on over ninety international conference and workshop program committees. He served in various capacities in first the Pervasive and then joint UbiComp and Pervasive steering committees, 2006-2009 (member Pervasive), 2009-2011 (chair Pervasive) and 2011-2013 (member joint steering committee). He was the inaugural editor-in-chief for the journal “Computers” from 2011 – 2015. He was a member of the University of St Andrews’ Teaching and Research Ethics Committee. From 2011 – 2014 he was an external member of the IDEAS Research Institute Executive Committee in Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, where he holds a visiting Professorship.
Aaron has held a number of academic and industrial roles prior to joining the University of St Andrews. He was the director of the Human Interface Technology Laboratory, Australia (HIT Lab AU) and Associate Professor in the University of Tasmania, Australia from December 2009 until July of 2010. From January 2005 until December of 2009 he was a College Lecturer in the University College Dublin, Ireland and an IBM Visiting Scientist with the IBM Centre for Advanced Studies in Dublin. From September 2002 until January 2005 he was a Senior Research Fellow in the University of Sydney working with the Smart Internet CRC and the National ICT Australia (NICTA). From August of 2001 until June of 2002 he was a Visiting Research Scientist with Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL) in Cambridge Massachusetts, USA. Prior to this, he was an Associate Lecturer in the University of Newcastle, Australia from May 1999 until August of 2001 and a researcher with Semantic Designs in Austin Texas, USA from July of 1998 until February of 1999. Before starting his doctoral studies he was an ALT on the JET Program in Hizen-Cho Saga, Japan from 1995 until 1997. Aaron obtained his BA(mod) in Computer Science with first class honours from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland in 1995 and then from October 1997 until September 2001 he completed his PhD in Computer Science in the University of Newcastle Australia.
Immediately before joining St Andrews in 2009-2010 Aaron was the inaugural director for the HITLab Australia. While with the HIT Lab AU Aaron was a partner in the EU project BRAID on Bridging Research in Ageing and ICT Development. This was an EU FP7 Support Action funded within (Objective ICT-2009.7.1 ICT & Ageing). In 2010 he was the co-chair of a workshop on coupled display visual interfaces in conjunction with the 10th International Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI 2010) in Rome Italy and workshops co-chair for Pervasive 2010 in Helsinki Finland. In 2009, he was the conference co-chair for I-HCI the third conference of the Irish HCI Community and program co-chair for the 4th International Symposium on Location- and Context-Awareness (LoCA 2009) in Tokyo Japan in May 2009. And he was one of the editors for a special issue on interaction with coupled and public displays in the Springer Journal of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing.
From 2005 to 2009 Aaron worked in UCD where he was Co-Principal Investigator for the SFI Strategic Research Cluster Clique on Graph and Network Analysis, an IBM CAS Visiting Scientist, UCD director of ODCSSS, coordinator for the EU FP7 support action CAPSIL, a researcher in Lero the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre, a collaborator in CLARITY the Centre for Sensor Web Technologies and the UCD PI for Vizi, a collaborative digital technology research project between Twelve Horses, IADT and UCD which was funded by the NDRC. Aaron was one of the inventors of the SenseTile platform which was realised through a research infrastructure grant funded by the Science Foundation Ireland. He was also a member of UCD’s research IT steering committee. Some of his other responsibilities in UCD included, course director for the higher diploma in Computer Science UCD (2007-2009), member of the EMPS Graduate Taught Programmes Board (2007 – 2009) and principal investigator for the technology platform strand of the TRIL Centre (2007 – 2009). The TRIL Centre (Technology Research for Independent Living) was an Intel/IDA funded project. During his tenure as PI he grew the technology platform team by 50%, released the BioMOBIUS research platform to the research community (Apr 2008), relocated the TTP team to the research environment of the Complex and Adaptive Systems Laboratory UCD, proposed, planned and delivered 3 international workshops at Intel research Amberglen, Portland, EMBS Conference, Vancouver, Canada and the University College Dublin in conjunction with the EMEA research conference, directed the team in the development and deployment of technology into homes to support trials by the three clinical strands and submitted journal and conference papers and published various workshop papers. Some of these papers have formed the basis for Kinesis Health Technologies which sells proven tools for falls risk and mobility, a successful spin out now incorporated in Ireland.
Before working in UCD he was a Senior Research Fellow in the University of Sydney where he led Project Nightingale, the first collaborative CRC-NICTA project in Australia. Project Nightingale focused on how elders share memories and the project produced a number of demonstrators including Memento, SharePic and the Ubicomp Scrapbook along with a number of leading conference and journal publications incorporating user studies with older people. During this time he taught in a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses. He was on the Editorial Board for the JPCC – International Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications, he was a core member of the ARC Research Network in Enterprise Information Infrastructure in Australia and was an associate member of the ARC/NHMRC Research Network in Ageing Well.
Aaron has examined Masters and PhD theses in Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin (Ireland), Lancaster University and University of Glasgow (UK), IT University of Copenhagen (Denmark), University of Oulu (Finland) and ANU, UNSW and University of Sydney (Australia). He continues to review and be a panelist for internationally funded research including, the Data Analytics Technology and Cloud Computing Technology Centres (Enterprise Ireland), National Digital Research Centre (Ireland), Research Foundation Flanders (Belgium), COMET K1-Centre (Austria), EPSRC (UK), Swiss National Science Foundation (Switzerland), Foundation for Science and the Technology (Portugal) and NSERC (Canada).