Ted Selker

Dr. Ted Selker is known for creating and guiding strategic technology opportunities. He variously works as advisor, Chief Scientist, and CTO for startups. He has worked for CTO’s and CEO’s on innovation and strategy for large companies. Typically Ted’s work creates demonstrations of “considerate technology” to recognize and respect human intention in complex domains, such as kitchens, cars, and mobile and desktop collaboration. The work develops whatever technology is appropriate from input device and display hardware to AI for education.

His successes at product creation and enhancement earned him the technical executive position IBM Fellow. There, he created R&D programs and was senior manager of User Systems Ergonomics Research. He worked across the company to foster innovative technology business opportunities. He created demonstration products at companies like Amazon, Xerox PARC, ATARI.

Ted helped develop the graduate research program at Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley and created the Considerate Systems group. Ted served as Associate Professor at the MIT Media Laboratory where he created the Context-Aware Computing group. He is a consulting professor at Aarhus University, a Senior Research Scientist at UC Berkeley, has served as a consulting professor at Stanford University, taught at Hampshire, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Brown University.

The innovation Ted created and managed has been responsible for hugely profitable and award-winning products, ranging from notebook computers to operating systems. For example, his design of the TrackPoint in-keyboard pointing device is still used in many notebook computers. His visualizations have improved the performance of the PowerPC, Google maps, and usability of OS/2 and ThinkPad. His adaptive help system has been used by tens of millions of PC users as well. Ted’s work has resulted in numerous awards, patents, and papers, and has often been featured in the press.

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