The 2022 CHCCS/SCDHM Achievement Award of the Canadian Human-Computer Communications Society is presented to Professor Pourang Irani from the University of British Columbia Okanagan for his significant research contributions in the areas of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Information Visualization. His work has inspired many colleagues and young scholars and has put the University of Manitoba on the international map in HCI research.
Pourang is a Professor in Computer Science and Principal Research Chair, at the University of British Columbia Okanagan (UBCO). He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of New Brunswick in 2002 under the supervision of Dr. Colin Ware. Pourang started his career at the University of Manitoba (UofM) and served there for 19 years as a faculty member in Computer Science and as Acting Associate Dean for the Faculty of Science before moving to UBCO in January 2022. Pourang held a Canada Research Chair in Ubiquitous Analytics at the UofM and was a recipient of many best paper awards and honorable mention awards at the top tier conferences in his field (ACM CHI, UIST). In addition to making contributions with his students, Pourang has collaborated with researchers from top industrial research laboratories and universities. He was a visiting researcher at the Université de Toulouse, Ecole Nationale d’Aviation Civile, INRIA, and Microsoft Research Redmond.
Pourang joined the UofM in 2002. He formed the HCI lab in the Computer Science department, which by that time was one of the earliest HCI labs in Canada. Soon he became one of the most research-active members in his department. Pourang has published over 160 peer-reviewed papers, including four dozen at CHI/UIST/Vis, and others at many reputable venues including MobileHCI, VAST, ISMAR, Graphics Interface, Spatial User Interfaces, and AVI. Over the years, his impact on research has gone beyond the confines of his group and has made Manitoba one of the most competitive and attractive places for young scholars and junior faculty members in HCI, leading to significant growth in student body and tenure track HCI faculty. Manitoba’s HCI group is now one of the largest and most influential in the country with three professors and over 140 student alumni.
As an educator, perhaps Pourang’s greatest contribution to the Canadian and International HCI community has been the training of the next generation researchers through his mentorship of over 83 students and post-doctoral fellows which has led to the growth of HCI as a field in Manitoba, and beyond. As a substantial impact of Pourang’s work, almost all of his Ph.D. students and PDFs have gone on to successful faculty and research positions in Canada, Europe, China, and the US, including Google, Microsoft, ESTIA, Université de Toulouse, Monash University, Simon Fraser University, the University of British Columbia Okanagan, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.