Doug A. Bowman has been a member of the Center for HCI since arriving at Virginia Tech in 1999, and served as CHCI Director from 2011-2025. During his time as Director, CHCI grew to a community of over 80 faculty affiliates from all corners of the university, became an institute-level center within the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology, and opened up formal membership to students for the first time. He instituted the CHCI planning grant program and oversaw other funding programs that help facilitate innovative, interdisciplinary HCI research across the center. His own research is in the area of user experience for virtual reality and augmented reality systems. His research contributions have been recognized with awards such as the ISMAR Career Impact Award and the IEEE VGTC Technical Achievement Award in Virtual Reality. Having handed over the reins of the Center, he is excited to lead new initiatives around the topic of intelligent XR.

Stacy Branham was a member of the Virginia Tech HCI community from 2007 to 2014. During that time, her research focused on interpersonal communication technologies, but her service was devoted to ensuring that women felt belonging in computing. When her postdoctoral studies introduced her to digital accessibility needs of blind individuals, she pivoted to Accessible Computing research. Today, she is an Associate Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine. In her research and service, she creates technologies with disabled people that enable them to thrive in computing and in higher education, so they can lead the way to a more inclusive digital future. Branham is Co-PI of NSF AccessComputing, a national initiative to teach digital accessibility to the next generation of technologists. She is also a member of the Computing Research Association’s Education board, where she leads a national effort to assess digital accessibility of college computing classrooms. She is Technical Program Chair for the 2026 ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility and an Associate Editor of the ACM TOCHI journal. She lives with her husband, also a CHCI alum, and their two children in Southern California––where she occasionally misses the snow, but always the people in Southwest Virginia.

Yong Cao was a member of the Virginia Tech HCI community from 2007 to 2014. During that time, his research focused Real-time Interaction in Information Visualization, Parallel Computing in Computer Graphics, and Motion Synthesis. Yong is also a member of the Institute of Creativity, Art and Technology (ICAT), an affiliated organization of CHCI. He collaborated with ICAT and the School of Visual Art on several research projects, and co-created the joint course of Video Game Design and Development. Yong is currently working at Amazon Robotics, developing manipulation robots with the targeted areas of Robot Perception and Motion Control.

Yan Chen has been a member of the Virginia Tech HCI community from 2023 to the present. During that time, his research has focused on human-AI collaboration, programming education, and the design of interactive systems that make programming more accessible at scale. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech, where he leads the PRIME Lab. His recent work includes developing visualization systems to help instructors monitor real-time coding behaviors in large classrooms, creating validation-by-demonstration workflows for AI-generated feedback, and exploring wearable interfaces for adaptive feedback in physical training.

Dr. Cheryl D. Seals, the Charles E. Barkley Professor of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Auburn University, is a distinguished researcher, educator, and leader with over 25 years of experience, including 21 years as Auburn faculty and five years in industry at Bellcore/Telcordia and IBM. An alumna of Grambling State University, North Carolina A&T State University, and Virginia Tech (PhD), Dr. Seals has contributed significantly to her academic community through leadership roles, program committees, advisory boards, and service as faculty advisor to multiple student organizations. Her research program focuses on Advanced Learning Technologies, emphasizing user-centered design, participatory evaluation, and immersive experiences. With nearly $20M in collaborative funding and over 130 publications, her work spans eLearning, teacher education, computational linguistics, and mixed-reality applications. Projects have supported disciplines such as pharmacy, civil engineering, building science, communication disorders, and medicine through VR and AR innovations. Dr. Seals has mentored over 200 graduate and undergraduate students, graduating 23 Ph.D. and 78 master’s students. She has also co-led NSF-funded initiatives including IAAMCS and STARS, both aimed at supporting computing availability for all, fostering mentorship, leadership, outreach, and research training across diverse communities.