
is a Japanese computer scientist. He is a professor at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern t ...
. Ishii pioneered the
Tangible User Interface
A tangible user interface (TUI) is a user interface in which a person interacts with digital information through the physical environment. The initial name was Graspable User Interface, which is no longer used. The purpose of TUI development i ...
in the field of
Human-computer interaction with the paper ''"Tangible Bits: Towards Seamless Interfaces between People, Bits and Atoms"'', co-authored with his then PhD student Brygg Ullmer.
Biography

Ishii was born in Tokyo and raised in
Sapporo
( ain, サッ・ポロ・ペッ, Satporopet, lit=Dry, Great River) is a city in Japan. It is the largest city north of Tokyo and the largest city on Hokkaido, the northernmost main island of the country. It ranks as the fifth most populous ci ...
.
He received
B.E. in
electronic engineering
Electronics engineering is a sub-discipline of electrical engineering which emerged in the early 20th century and is distinguished by the additional use of active components such as semiconductor devices to amplify and control electric current ...
, and
M.E. and
Ph.D. in
computer engineering
Computer engineering (CoE or CpE) is a branch of electrical engineering and computer science that integrates several fields of computer science and electronic engineering required to develop computer hardware and software. Computer enginee ...
from
Hokkaido University
, or , is a Japanese national university in Sapporo, Hokkaido. It was the fifth Imperial University in Japan, which were established to be the nation's finest institutions of higher education or research. Hokkaido University is considered ...
in Sapporo, Japan.
Hiroshi Ishii founded the Tangible Media Group and started their ongoing
Tangible Bits project in 1995, when he joined the
MIT Media Laboratory as
a professor of Media Arts and Sciences. Ishii relocated from Japan's NTT
Human Interface Laboratories in
Yokosuka
is a city in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan.
, the city has a population of 409,478, and a population density of . The total area is . Yokosuka is the 11th most populous city in the Greater Tokyo Area, and the 12th in the Kantō region.
The ...
, where he had made his mark in
Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work
(CSCW) in the early 1990s. Ishii
was elected to the
CHI Academy in 2006. He was named to the 2022 class of
ACM Fellow
ACM or A.C.M. may refer to:
Aviation
* AGM-129 ACM, 1990–2012 USAF cruise missile
* Air chief marshal
* Air combat manoeuvring or dogfighting
* Air cycle machine
* Arica Airport (Colombia) (IATA: ACM), in Arica, Amazonas, Colombia
Computing ...
s, "for contributions to tangible user interfaces and to human-computer interaction".
He currently teaches
the clas
MAS.834 Tangible Interfacesat the Media Lab.
External links
Computer programmers
Japanese computer scientists
Human–computer interaction researchers
Ubiquitous computing researchers
MIT School of Architecture and Planning faculty
Hokkaido University alumni
MIT Media Lab people
1956 births
Living people
People from Tokyo
Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery
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