George W. Furnas

Timeline

1. 1974–1980

   Psychology degrees from Harvard and Stanford

   He earns an AB in psychology at Harvard in 1974 and a PhD in psychology at Stanford in 1980.

2. 1980–1995

   A distinguished member at Bell Labs

   He joins Bell Labs in 1980 and works there as a distinguished member of the technical staff for 15 years.

3. 1986–1990

   Fisheye views and latent semantic analysis

   In 1986 he publishes 'Generalized fisheye views' at CHI '86. In 1990 he co-authors 'Indexing by latent semantic analysis' with four colleagues, a paper describing a new method for automatic indexing and retrieval.

4. 1995

   A professor at Michigan

   In 1995 he moves to the University of Michigan, where he is appointed professor of psychology, professor of computer science and engineering, and professor at the School of Information.

5. 2002–2008

   Associate dean for academic strategy

   From 2002 to 2008 he serves as associate dean for academic strategy in the School of Information.

6. 2004

   Elected to the CHI Academy

   He is elected to the CHI Academy in 2004, an honorary group of individuals who have made substantial contributions to the field of human-computer interaction.

7. 2011

   Named an ACM Fellow

   In 2011 he is inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. ACM names 46 members to its 2011 Fellows class.

8. As of October 2026

   Professor emeritus at Michigan

   He is professor emeritus of information, of electrical engineering and computer science, and of psychology.