The New ABCs of Research: Achieving Breakthrough Collaborations
Thursday, April 21, 2016, 8:00pm

Refreshments and networking at 7:30pm

Computer Science 105

How should we organize research programs in computer science and technology? Research helps us
produce innovative new products (the next iPhone), and research also delivers “foundational
theories” (new algorithms and supporting technologies).

Solving the immense problems of the 21st century will require ambitious research teams that are
skilled at producing practical solutions and foundational theories simultaneously – that is the ABC
Principle: Applied & Basic Combined. Then these research teams can deliver high-impact outcomes
by applying the SED Principle: Blend Science, Engineering and Design Thinking, which encourages
use of the methods from all three disciplines. These guiding principles (ABC & SED) are meant to
replace Vannevar Bush’s flawed linear model from 1945 that has misled researchers for 70+ years.
These new guiding principles will enable students, faculty, business leaders, and government policy
makers to accelerate discovery and innovation. The examples in the talk will emphasize how these
guiding principles can be applied to reinvigorate computing research.

Ben Shneiderman (http://www.cs.umd.edu/~ben) is a Distinguished University Professor in the
Department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland. He is also the Founding Director
(1983-2000) of the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory (http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/), and a
Member of the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS). He is
a Fellow of the AAAS, ACM, IEEE, and NAI, and a Member of the National Academy of
Engineering, in recognition of his pioneering contributions to human-computer interaction and
information visualization. His contributions include the direct manipulation concept, clickable
highlighted web-links, touchscreen keyboards, dynamic query sliders for Spotfire, development of
treemaps, novel network visualizations for NodeXL, and temporal event sequence analysis for
electronic health records.

Ben is the co-author with Catherine Plaisant of Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective
Human-Computer Interaction (6th ed., 2016). His book Leonardo’s Laptop (MIT Press) won the
IEEE book award for Distinguished Literary Contribution. Shneiderman’s latest book is The New
ABCs of Research: Achieving Breakthrough Collaborations (Oxford, February 2016).

Information: Dennis Mancl (908) 285-1066

On-line info: http://PrincetonACM.acm.org

All Princeton ACM / IEEE-CS meetings are open to the public. Students and their parents are welcome. There is
no admission charge, and refreshments are served.

A pre-meeting dinner is held at 6:00 p.m. at Ruby Tuesday’s Restaurant on Route 1. Please send email to
princetonacm@gmail.com in advance if you plan to attend the dinner.