Kotaro Hara

I am an Assistant Professor in the SMU's School of Computing and Information Systems. My research lies at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and accessibility. I focus on design, development, and deployment of technologies that combine crowdsourcing and computation to support people with disabilities.

I was a postdoctoral fellow in the Robotics Institute and Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University from 2016 to 2017, where I worked with Prof. Aaron Steinfeld and Prof. Jeff Bigham. Before that, I was a Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland, College Park, where I was advised by Prof. Jon Froehlich.

Prospective Students

I am looking for motivated, passionate, and talented graduate students who can work with me to design future technologies to support people with disabilities. If this interests you, consider applying to the SCIS Ph.D. program.

Qualification

• PhD, University of Maryland, 2016

Teaching Topics

• Human-Computer Interaction
• Interaction Design & Prototyping

Awards and Honors

• CHI 2019 Best Paper Award, SIGCHI, 2019
• CHI 2018 Honourable Mention Award, ACM SIGCHI, 2018
• Best Paper Nomination, The Web for All conference Addressing information barriers 2017, 2017
• IBM PhD Fellowship, IBM, 2014
• The ACM Computing Reviews Best of Computing 2014, Association for Computing Machinery, 2014
• HCIL Conference Travel Award, HCIL 2013, 2013
• ASSETS 2013 Best Paper Award, ACM SIGACCESS, 2013
• The International Conference Student Support Award, UMD, 2013
• Jacob K. Goldhaber Travel Award, Jacob K. Goldhaber, 2013