Organick Lecture Series

Header honoring Elliott I Organick, 1925 to 1985

Background

Elliott I. Organick served fifteen years at the University of Utah, tirelessly helping shape the Department’s academic and research programs. In addition, he brought recognition and honor to the Department through his prolific writing, his unstinting professional service, and the warmth of his humanity.

Upon his passing in 1985 many of his friends, colleagues and former students established a permanent memorial, the Elliott I. Organick Endowment. This endowment enhances the Computer Science environment in Utah through a pair of lectures which are the highlight public events of each academic year.

2026 Lecture - Jeffrey P. Bigham, Carnegie Mellon University

October 20, 2026

Warnock Engineering Building - RM 1250 ; University of Utah
72 S Campus Center Drive, SLC, Utah 84112

4:30 PM: Reception - Catmull Gallery
5:30 PM: Lecture - 1250 WEB

Accessibility Predicts Interaction in the AI Realization Era

What will interaction with computers be like once current trends in AI are fully realized? Some predict that the chat interfaces common today will be sufficient, or that humans won’t need to do anything at all because AI will decide. Neither seems quite right (or desirable). I’ve worked at the intersection of AI and Accessibility for 20 years, expanding the affordances possible to use to interact with computers and wresting with tradeoffs like the ease of getting things done versus human agency in deciding what happens. A trend I’ve noticed is that once we solve a surface level problem (e.g., understanding the user interface components on a UI using computer vision, or executing arbitrary tasks on the web on behalf of the user), new challenges are revealed (e.g., making the accessible experience usable, or building agents that surface appropriate choices along the way). In this talk, I’ll revisit some of those projects, discuss how current AI has solved the surface problems but revealed new challenges, and make some predictions about what we might expect for the AI Realization Era.

Bio: I am an Associate Professor in the Human-Computer Interaction and Language Technologies Institutes in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, and the Director of Human-Centered Machine Learning at Apple. I build systems that advance how people can responsibly work with machine learning to do interesting and useful things. This has taken on a variety of focuses throughout my career – I have worked on applications in accessibility for disabilities, used crowdsourcing to power a wide variety of real-time systems, and most recently thought about how to design responsible and useful experiences using generative AI. Much of my work focuses on accessibility because I see the field as a window into the future, given that people with disabilities are often the earliest adopters of AI. I received my B.S.E degree in Computer Science from Princeton University in 2003, and received my Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Washington in 2009. I received the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship (2014), the MIT Technology Review Top 35 Innovators Under 35 Award (2009), the NSF CAREER Award (2012), and the CHI Academy (2026).

Transit and Parking Information:

Warnock Engineering Building - Room 1250
72 S Campus Center Drive, SLC, Utah 84112

PUBLIC TRANSIT: Ride UTA Trip Planner

Click the linked image below for a map or click here for Google Maps location.

Past Lectures

(36) 2025 – Vinod Vaikuntanathan, MIT

(35) 2024 – Alexis “Alyosha” Efros, UC Berkeley (VIDEO)

(34) 2023 – Elizabeth Churchill, Senior Director of UX at Google

(33) 2021 – Telle Whitney, Co-founder Grace Hopper Celebration

(32) 2019 – Pat Hanrahan, Stanford University

(31) 2018 – Maurice Herlihy, Brown University

(30) 2017 – Kathy Yelick, UC Berkeley

(29) 2016 – Moshe Vardi, Rice University

(28) 2015 – Farnam Jahanian, Carnegie Mellon University

(27) 2014 – Ed Lazowska, University of Washington

(26) 2013 – Peter Neumann, SRI International

(25) 2012 – David E. Shaw, D.E. Shaw Research

(24) 2010 – Sebastian Thrun, Stanford University

(23) 2009 – Ed Catmull, Ph.D., President Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios

(22) 2008 – Fran Allen, IBM T.J. Watson Research Laboratory

(21) 2007 – Jeannette Wing, Carnegie Mellon University

(20) 2006 – Alan Kay, Viewpoints Research Institute, Inc.

(19) 2005 – Vinton Cerf, Technology Strategy, MCI Inc.

(18) 2004 – Jim Gray, Microsoft Research

(17) 2003 – David Patterson, UC Berkeley

(16) 2002 – David Gelernter, Yale University

(15) 2001 – Bill Joy, Sun Microsystems, Inc.

(14) 2000 – Takeo Kanade, Carnegie Mellon University

(13) 1999 – Guy L. Steele, Jr., Sun Microsystems, Inc.

(12) 1998 – Richard M. Karp, University of Washington

(11) 1997 – Raj Reddy, Carnegie Mellon University

(10) 1996 – John Hennessy, Stanford University

(9) 1995 – Robert E. Kahn, Corporation for National Research Initiatives

(8) 1994 – Butler W. Lampson, Digital Equipment Corporation

(7) 1993 – Ivan Sutherland, Sun Microsystems, Inc.

(6) 1992 – Dana S. Scott, Carnegie Mellon University

(5) 1991 – Carver A. Mead, California Institute of Technology

(4) 1990 – Donald E. Knuth, Stanford University

(3) 1989 – C.A.R. Hoare, Oxford University

(2) 1988 – John E. Hopcroft, Cornell University

(1) 1987 – Kristen Nygaard, University of Oslo, Norway

For more information on the series please contact ellen.marie.lewis@utah.edu