Elizabeth Mynatt

Research interests

• Health informatics
• Human computer interaction
• Ubiquitous computing

Education

• PhD in Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology
• MS in Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology
• BS in Computer Science, summa cum laude, North Carolina State University

Biography

Elizabeth Mynatt is the Dean of Khoury College of Computer Sciences. She joined Northeastern University in January 2022 after a 23-year career at Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), where she most recently served as Regents’ and Distinguished Professor in the College of Computing and executive director of the Institute of People and Technology.

Mynatt is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of ubiquitous computing and assistive technologies. Her research contributes to ongoing advances in personal health informatics, computer-supported collaborative work, and human-centered computing.

In her research Mynatt directed the Everyday Computing Lab at Georgia Tech. There she investigated the design of health and information technologies to support breast cancer patients during their journey using personalized mobile technologies.

Mynatt also was one of the leading researchers in the Aware Home Research Initiative, that investigated future home technology designs that enable aging adults to continue to live independently. Mynatt is also senior investigator with Emory’s Cognitive Empowerment Program and co-PI for the NSF AI-CARING Institute, both with the goal of creating longitudinal, interactive AI technologies to empower older adults and their care networks.

Mynatt was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2024. She serves as member of the National Academies Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) and the NSF Directorate for Computer, Information Science & Engineering Advisory Committee (CISE AC). She has been recognized as a member of the ACM SIGCHI Academy, and a Sloan and Kavli research fellow. Mynatt is the past Chair of the Computing Community Consortium, an NSF-sponsored effort to engage the computing research community in envisioning more audacious research challenges.

Mynatt has published more than 100 scientific papers, led grants from the NSF and NIH, and chaired the CHI 2010 conference, the premier international conference in human-computer interaction. In 2015 she became a Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions to human-centered computing and the development of health information technologies. Mynatt was elected as an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow in 2021 for exceptional computing community leadership and for distinguished leadership and contributions to human-centered computing, with a focus on assistive technologies, wellness, and health. Her article, “Charting past, present, and future research in ubiquitous computing,” published in 2000, has been cited over 2000 times. She has also been quoted or featured in major publications including the Washington Post, National Geographic, and The Wall Street Journal.

Mynatt earned her Bachelor of Science summa cum laude in computer science from North Carolina State University and her Master of Science and Ph.D. in computer science from Georgia Tech. Prior to joining the Georgia Tech faculty in 1998, Mynatt was a member of the research staff at Xerox PARC.

Recent publications