Björn Hartmann was an ARC Fellow in Spring 2015 – he was chosen in the Faculty category.
Björn Hartmann is an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Hartmann is broadly interested in tools to support human ingenuity, across a number of domains including design, programming and engineering. He is also interested in embodied cognition, especially in AR/VR. Methodologically, his group predominantly focuses on systems research: they contribute complex, working interactive systems that embody their research ideas and enable them to test specific hypotheses. However, Hartmann also appreciates (and conducts) careful, controlled experiments. He holds the Paul and Judy Gray Alumni Presidential Chair in Engineering Excellence, was previously a Qualcomm Faculty Fellow and has received an NSF CAREER award, Sloan fellowship, and Okawa research award. Hartmann's group predominantly publishes at the top HCI conferences UIST, CHI and CSCW. He also publishes in more topic-specific venues like DIS, ICSE, VL/HCC, and Learning@Scale. His work has received multiple best paper prizes at these conferences.
Hartmann is affiliated faculty in the Berkeley Institute of Design. Previously, from 2016-2023, he was the Faculty Director of the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation. Prior to leading the Jacobs Institute, Hartmann co-founded the CITRIS Invention Lab, a lab equipped with many digital fabrication and rapid prototyping tools. The lab served as inspiration and testbed for many of his research projects. Hartmann was also involved in the Swarm Lab. He spends time with great colleagues at the Berkeley Center for New Media, and the Visual Computing Lab. He received his PhD from the Stanford Computer Science department in 2009 where he worked with Scott Klemmer (dissertation). Hartmann received an MSE in Computer and Information Science as well as Undergraduate Degrees in Digital Media Design and Communication from the University of Pennsylvania in 2002.