Lorraine Borman is an American computer scientist associated with

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

who specializes in

information retrieval Information retrieval (IR) in computing and information science is the process of obtaining information system resources that are relevant to an information need from a collection of those resources. Searches can be based on full-text or other co ...

computational social science Computational social science is the academic sub-discipline concerned with computational approaches to the social sciences. This means that computers are used to model, simulate, and analyze social phenomena. Fields include computational economics ...

, and

human–computer interaction Human–computer interaction (HCI) is research in the design and the use of computer technology, which focuses on the interfaces between people (users) and computers. HCI researchers observe the ways humans interact with computers and design tec ...

. She was one of the founders of

SIGCHI The Special Interest Group on Computer–Human Interaction (SIGCHI) is one of the Association for Computing Machinery's special interest groups which is focused on human–computer interactions (HCI). It hosts the flagship annual international HC ...

, the Special Interest Group on Computer–Human Interaction of the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...

, and became its first chair.

Background

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Borman worked at the Vogelback Computing Center of Northwestern University, where she published several works in information retrieval and computational social science. By 1977, she was editor of the Bulletin of the ACM Special Interest Group on the Social and Behavioral Science of Computing (SIGSOC), and in that role traveled to China with a group of Northwestern faculty and toured the computing facilities there.

Founding SIGCHI

Beginning in 1978, she and SIGSOC chair Greg Marks began talking about refocusing SIGSOC, because by then the use of computers in the social sciences had become more mainstream, making it possible for SIGSOC's core constituency of social scientists to interact through social science societies instead of through the ACM. Borman and Marks found their new focus in

; Borman chaired a panel on this topic at an ACM Conference in 1978, and was the proceedings editor of a SIGSOC conference in 1981 centered on the topic. By 1982, they had persuaded the ACM to rename SIGSOC to SIGCHI. Borman became the first chair of the new SIG, and remained chair for six years.

Awards and honors

In 1992, the ACM gave Borman their Outstanding Contribution to ACM Award and in 1994 they elected her as an

ACM Fellow ACM or A.C.M. may refer to: Aviation * AGM-129 ACM, 1990–2012 USAF cruise missile * Air chief marshal * Air combat manoeuvring or dogfighting * Air cycle machine * Arica Airport (Colombia) (IATA: ACM), in Arica, Amazonas, Colombia Computing ...

"for her diligent work and commitment to the development and growth of SIGCHI and for her creative spark and skilled workmanship which guided the research and publication of the DataPlan Committee reports."Award citation

, retrieved 2015-06-18. In 2003 she was given the SIGCHI Lifetime Service Award.2003 SIGCHI Awards
, retrieved 2015-06-18.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Borman, Lorraine Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American computer scientists American women computer scientists Human–computer interaction researchers Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery 20th-century American scientists 21st-century American scientists 20th-century American women scientists 21st-century American women scientists