PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Brad A. Myers

Brad A. Myers is a Carnegie Mellon professor who proposed in 2026 that AI should become part of everyday software interfaces. His CMU work included Garnet and Amulet and the Natural Programming project, which explored ways to help non-programmers create software. He received the SIGCHI Lifetime Research Award in 2017, and his 2024 book on interaction techniques won the 2025 CBI Human-Computer Interaction History Prize. Since 2023, he directs Carnegie Mellon’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute.

Works
540
Citations
31,434
h-index
94
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 19 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 1975–1980

    MIT and Xerox PARC

    He studies computer science at MIT from 1975 to 1980, earns BS and MS degrees, and completes a master's thesis on Incense while interning at Xerox PARC.

  2. 1980–1983

    The Sapphire Window Manager

    At PERQ Systems, he works as a senior software engineer from 1980 to 1983 and designs Sapphire, one of the first commercial window systems, with icons and percent-done progress indicators.

  3. 1987

    Peridot at Toronto

    He earns a PhD in computer science at the University of Toronto in 1987 and develops Peridot, a user-interface tool, there.

  4. 1987–1996

    Garnet and Amulet

    He joins CMU's computer science faculty as a research computer scientist in 1987. The User Interface Software Group creates Garnet in Lisp in 1988 and begins work on Amulet in 1994; in 1996, he coauthors a paper describing Amulet as a development environment for interactive graphical interfaces.

  5. 1998

    Natural Programming

    In 1998, he leads CMU's Natural Programming Project, which studies how non-programmers reason about programming and designs languages and environments to make programming easier.

  6. 2017

    SIGCHI Lifetime Research Award

    In 2017, he receives the SIGCHI Lifetime Research Award for research contributions to human-computer interaction.

  7. 2024–2025

    Pick, Click, Flick!

    He publishes Pick, Click, Flick!: The Story of Interaction Techniques with ACM Books in 2024; the book wins the CBI Human-Computer Interaction History Prize in 2025.

  8. Since 2023

    Directing CMU's HCII

    Since 2023, he directs CMU's Human-Computer Interaction Institute and serves as a professor of HCI. In September 2026, he proposes intelligent interaction techniques that put AI inside reusable interface components such as menus and text fields.

Career

  1. Since 1987Carnegie Mellon UniversityProfessor, Director; Professor of HCI
  2. 1980–1983PERQ SystemsSenior Software Engineer
  3. 1975–1980Xerox PARCIntern

Education

  1. 1987University of TorontoPhD
  2. 1980Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyBS and MS

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

Most-cited works

  1. Watch what I do: programming by demonstration1993 · Medical Entomology and Zoology · 1,027 citations
  2. Past, present, and future of user interface software tools2000 · ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction · 809 citations
  3. An Exploratory Study of How Developers Seek, Relate, and Collect Relevant Information during Software Maintenance Tasks2006 · IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering · 683 citations
  4. A brief history of human-computer interaction technology1998 · interactions · 669 citations
  5. The state of the art in end-user software engineering2011 · ACM Computing Surveys · 627 citations

From OpenAlex, as of 19 October 2026.

  1. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Carnegie Mellon University. Our estimates of where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led, from education records in cited biographies.
  2. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Carnegie Mellon University. Our estimates of combined and median h-index at AI organizations, using current affiliations and OpenAlex records.
  3. The median h-index is 54 at universities and 19 at frontier AI labsIncludes Carnegie Mellon University. The median h-index is 54 at universities and 19 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, citations and moves to estimate how universities and frontier labs contribute to AI research.
  4. Stanford University trained or employed 26 of the 108 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Carnegie Mellon University. Stanford University trained or employed 26 of the 108 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and employment links for major-prize and best-paper winners.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. Brad Myers - College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University engineering.cmu.edu. Checked 18 October 2026.
  2. Resume for Brad A. Myers cs.cmu.edu. Checked 18 October 2026.
  3. Inventing the future cs.cmu.edu. Checked 18 October 2026.
  4. Amulet FAQ cs.cmu.edu. Checked 18 October 2026.
  5. The Amulet Environment: New Models for Effective User Interface Software Development cs.cmu.edu. Checked 18 October 2026.
  6. Natural Programming: Project Overview and Proposal cs.cmu.edu. Checked 18 October 2026.
  7. Award Recipients sigchi.org. Checked 18 October 2026.
  8. Brad A. Myers's Home Page cs.cmu.edu. Checked 18 October 2026.
  9. Intelligent Interaction Techniques (IIxT) - Proposal arxiv.org. Checked 18 October 2026.
  10. CMU at CHI 2026 hcii.cmu.edu. Checked 18 October 2026.