About Wendy Mackay
Born 1956. Wendy Mackay is an American and Canadian computer scientist.
Education Mackay received a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from University of California, San Diego in 1977. She received a Master of Arts in experimental psychology from Northeastern University in 1979 and a Doctor of Philosophy in Management of Technological Innovation from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1990. Her doctoral research was supervised by Wanda Orlikowski.
Career and research After graduating from Northeastern University, Mackay worked in several roles at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). In 1983, she focused formed a multimedia research group there and became a visiting scientist at MIT. At DEC, she created over 30 multimedia projects, including the first interactive video system which was titled IVIS. From 1987 to 1990 she worked on her Ph.D. at MIT and eventually worked as a senior research scientist at Xerox PARC where she published an award-winning special issue of Communications of the ACM on computer augmented environments. She also worked on augmented paper interfaces and explored the integration of paper with the online world. Afterward, she taught at Stanford University for two years as a visiting professor.
Her scientific contributions include writing the original toolkit software for IVIS, the world's first interactive video system. She also conducted the first major study of electronic mail while at MIT. Her design methods are taught in institutions around the world such as Stanford, MIT, Georgia Tech, and University of British Columbia. Mackay has published over two hundred research articles on human-computer interaction and has served as program chair or on the program committees of ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST), ACM Computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), ACM DIS and ACM Multimedia.
Awards and honors 2009, Elected a member of the CHI Academy
2009, Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) best paper award, top 1% of accepted papers, for Musink: Composing Music through Augmented Drawing 2011, SIGCHI Best Paper Award: Mid-air Pan-and-Zoom on Wall-sized Displays 2014, SIGCHI Lifetime Service Award 2020, Suffrage Science award 2024, ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Research Award for her contributions to the study of Human-Computer Interaction
Personal life Wendy married Michel Beaudouin-Lafon on August 11, 1993 in Avalon, California. She has two sons - Alexandre and Matthew Thomas Beaudouin-Mackay.
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Important facts
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Named in this biography and alive at the same time
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Frequently asked questions
Who is Wendy Mackay?
Computer Scientist
When was Wendy Mackay born?
Wendy Mackay was born on 25 May 1956 in Montreal.
What is Wendy Mackay's occupation?
Wendy Mackay is a computer scientist.
What nationality is Wendy Mackay?
Wendy Mackay is American and Canadian.
Sources & further reading
Cite this page
APA: Biography.guide. (2026). Wendy Mackay. https://biography.guide/wendy-mackay/
MLA: "Wendy Mackay." Biography.guide, https://biography.guide/wendy-mackay/.
Chicago: "Wendy Mackay." Biography.guide. https://biography.guide/wendy-mackay/.
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