Sara Kiesler

Who is Sara Kiesler?

Sara Kiesler is the Hillman Professor of Computer Science and Human Computer Interaction in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. She was elected to the CHI Academy in 2002, and was awarded CHI Lifetime Achievement Award, the most prestigious award by SIGCHI in 2009. She regularly serves on the ACM SIGCHI, CSCW, and HRI conference program committees. She is a past board member of the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Psychological Association and of the Association for Computing Machinery, and a founding member of the American Psychological Society. She also is a director of the nonprofit research company, American Institutes for Research.

Dr. Kiesler has broad interests in the design and social impact of computing ranging from computer-mediated communication and computer-supported cooperative work to human-robot interaction. In her early studies with Lee Sproull and her colleagues and students, she examined how computer networking changed group dynamics and social interaction. Their influential 1992 book, Connections described the indirect, secondary effects of using email in organizations. Through field observations and experiments they demonstrated the influence of computer-mediated communication phenomena such as status equalization, personal connections and flaming. Research with Robert E. Kraut from the 1990s showed that everyday use of the Internet increased users' depression and decreased their social connections. Later research showed that the psychological consequences of Internet use depend fundamentally on how it is used: communication with friends and family online has positive psychological consequences, while communication with strangers has negative effects. Her current projects include studies of collaboration and virtual organization in science, research on how individuals and groups performing analysis use visualizations, and research in the cognitive and social aspects of human-robot interaction.