Parmit Chilana

About Me

I am an Associate Professor and Ebco-Eppich Research Chair at the School of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University. My main area of research is in human-computer interaction (HCI). I co-direct the Interactive Experiences Lab at SFU.

My core research in HCI focuses on inventing and deploying user-centered software help and learning techniques for feature-rich applications in a variety of domains, such as 3D modeling, education, health, and software development. In particular, I am passionate about using interdisciplinary approaches to understand and design for user diversity and empower users from all backgrounds and skills levels to use, learn, and program emerging technologies. My work has been recognized with several awards and honors, including the 2022 CS-CAN Outstanding Early Career Computer Science Researcher Award, an NSERC Discovery Accelerator Award, and Best Paper Awards at venues such as ACM CHI. Before coming to SFU, I was an Assistant Professor at the University of Waterloo. I received my PhD from the University of Washington where I co-founded AnswerDash , a venture-funded startup that commercialized my award-winning dissertation work on crowdsourced contextual help retrieval.