Presenter

Jan Searleman taught Computer Science at Clarkson University for 37 years, retired in 2015, and since retirement has been an Adjunct Research Professor at Clarkson. Her research areas are Virtual Environments, Human-Computer Interaction, and Artificial Intelligence. In 1979, Jan, along with colleague James Lynch, established a major in Computer Science. She was instrumental in creating Clarkson’s MS and PhD in Computer Science. Jan created and taught a variety of CS courses, including Artificial Intelligence in 1979, and Computer Graphics in 1980 (in the days of a green dot on a black screen). In the 1990s, she created a student lab in Virtual Reality, and introduced a course on Virtual Environments.A senior member of the ACM since 1976, and of SIGGRAPH since 1978, Jan established Clarkson’s ACM student chapter in 1980. She also created Clarkson’s ACM SIGGRAPH student chapter. She advised both chapters until retirement. A member of the ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Art committee and the ACM SIGGRAPH History Committee, Jan co-directs, along with Bonnie Mitchell, the ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Art Archive and the ACM SIGGRAPH History Archive. In addition, she co-directs the ISEA Symposium Archive with Bonnie Mitchell and Wim van der Plas.