PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Jeffrey Bigham

Jeffrey Bigham is a human-computer interaction researcher who builds systems that help people work responsibly with machine learning, with much of his work focused on accessibility for people with disabilities. After a Princeton degree in 2003 and a University of Washington doctorate in 2009, he joined the University of Rochester in 2009, and Technology Review's 2009 TR35 list included him for the WebAnywhere screen reader. An NSF CAREER Award in 2012 supported his research on crowd support for people with disabilities; he moved to Carnegie Mellon in 2013, became a Sloan Research Fellow in 2014, and reported on the crowd-powered Chorus conversational assistant in 2016. In 2026, he was elected to the CHI Academy, and iTagPDF, a paper on automating PDF accessibility that he coauthored, won a CHI Best Paper Award. He is Director of Human-Centered Machine Learning and Responsible AI at Apple and an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon.

Badges

Timeline

  1. 2003–2009

    Princeton and a Washington doctorate

    He earns a bachelor's degree at Princeton in 2003 and a doctorate at the University of Washington in 2009.

  2. 2009

    WebAnywhere and the TR35 list

    In 2009, he joins the University of Rochester as an assistant professor of computer science. Technology Review names him to its TR35 list for creating WebAnywhere, a free web-based screen reader that converts Web pages to audio for people with little or no vision.

  3. 2012

    An NSF CAREER Award

    In 2012, the National Science Foundation gives him a CAREER Award of $500,000 over five years for his proposal "Closed-Loop Crowd Support of People with Disabilities." He describes his work as sitting at the intersection of human-computer interaction, human computation and artificial intelligence, and points to VizWiz, an application that lets blind people take pictures with an iPhone, ask questions and receive crowd answers in under a minute.

  4. 2013–2014

    Carnegie Mellon and a Sloan Fellowship

    He joins Carnegie Mellon's Human-Computer Interaction Institute in 2013 from the University of Rochester. In 2014, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation names him a Sloan Research Fellow for his work on crowd-powered technologies, which use the on-demand labor of people for tasks beyond the capability of today's computers.

  5. 2016

    The Chorus conversational assistant

    In 2016, he and coauthors Ting-Hao Huang, Walter Lasecki and Amos Azaria report on deploying Chorus, a crowd-powered conversational assistant that recruits workers on demand to decide each response. In the first month of deployment, 59 users hold conversations with Chorus across 320 sessions.

  6. 2026

    Election to the CHI Academy

    ACM SIGCHI elects him to the CHI Academy in 2026, an honorary group of people who have made substantial contributions to human-computer interaction. His work spans accessibility applications, real-time crowd-powered systems and, most recently, responsible and useful experiences with generative AI.

  7. 2026

    iTagPDF wins a CHI award

    With Peya Mowar and Aaron Steinfeld, he coauthors iTagPDF: Towards Finally Automating PDF Accessibility, which receives a Best Paper Award at CHI 2026.

  8. As of October 2026

    Apple and Carnegie Mellon

    He is Director of Human-Centered Machine Learning and Responsible AI at Apple and an associate professor in the Human-Computer Interaction and Language Technologies Institutes at Carnegie Mellon. He is also working on InformUp.org, which aims to help people learn about and take part in their local governments.

Career

  1. Since 2013Carnegie Mellon UniversityAssociate Professor
  2. NowAppleDirector of Human-Centered Machine Learning and Responsible AI
  3. From 2009University of RochesterAssistant Professor of Computer Science

Education

  1. 2009University of WashingtonDoctorate
  2. 2003Princeton UniversityBachelor's degree

From the biography.

  1. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Jeffrey Bigham. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  2. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Carnegie Mellon University. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  3. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Carnegie Mellon University. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  4. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Carnegie Mellon University. We estimate that Google holds the highest combined h-index at 8,016, while universities account for 73% of the deduplicated total across AI organizations.

Colleagues

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

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Jeffrey Bigham yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Computer Scientist Named One of 2009's 'Top 35' Researchers by MIT's Technology Review Magazine rochester.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Newsmakers | Princeton Alumni Weekly paw.princeton.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Computer Scientist Jeffrey Bigham Wins NSF Career Award rochester.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. News Brief: HCII's Jeffrey Bigham Named Sloan Research Fellow cmu.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Bigham Named Sloan Research Fellow | Human-Computer Interaction Institute hcii.cmu.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. "Is There Anything Else I Can Help You With?" Challenges in Deploying an On-Demand Crowd-Powered Conversational Agent ojs.aaai.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Bigham, Dabbish and Harrison Join CHI Academy | Human-Computer Interaction Institute hcii.cmu.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. CMU at CHI 2026 | Human-Computer Interaction Institute hcii.cmu.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.