Kathrin Gerling

Kathrin Gerling is Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Accessibility at the Institute for Anthropomatics und Robotics (IAR) within the Department of Informatics at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), and head of the research group Human-Computer Interaction and Accessibility. Previously, she was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at KU Leuven, Belgium (2017-2022) and a Lecturer/Senior Lecturer at the University of Lincoln, UK (2014-2017). In 2014, she received a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Saskatchewan, Canada.

The goal of her research in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is to empower diverse audiences to access interactive technology in the context of work, leisure and wellbeing. It seeks to contribute to our understanding of the relationship between bodily difference, technology, and participation in society, and how technology can be employed by disabled people to improve their quality of life. Excellence of her work and that of her team has been recognized through multiple awards, including Best Paper Awards at the leading venue in HCI, the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. For a full overview of her publications, please refer to her Google Scholar profile. She is a member of the steering committee of CHI PLAY, serves on the editorial board of PACM HCI, and is part of the SIGCHI executive committee as AC for hybridity. 

At KIT, Kathrin Gerling co-directs the Real-World Lab “Accessibility”, which is concerned with the design, development and evaluation of novel technologies and spatial configurations that can be leveraged by disabled people to lead self-determined lives. By examining the interplay between digital technology and physical space, the work of the lab also asks whether and how the presence of technology can enhance our usage and experience in space.