Chia Shen

Chia Shen is a Senior Research Fellow and Director of the SDR Lab at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Her lab conducts research in areas of HCI (human-computer interaction), interactive and tactile visual learning, large data visualization, and multi-touch collaboration. She is PI of the $2.3M NSF funded multi-institutional Life on Earth project (NSF DRL#1010889).

Chia is a pioneer in multi-touch user interface design, multi-touch tabletop systems and collaborative display environments. DiamondSpin, developed at MERL under her direction during 2001–2003, is the first open toolkit made available to the multi-touch research community and academic institutes throughout the world for the construction of experimental multi-user tabletop user-interface and applications. She has published over 80 papers and book chapters. Her patent portfolio represents the outcome of some of her innovative research projects. Her research has been featured in Biomedical Computation Review, Harvard Gazette, the New Scientist, Computer Power User Magazine, New Scientist, Danish Weekly, the Discovery Science Channel, the National Geographic Channel, and PBS/NOVA Engaging Science.