OTTRS Speaker Series: “Humans, AI, Tools, and Teammates: A Facilitated Conversation”
Date/Time: Friday, September 25, 2026 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Location: Virtual
Contact: INFO Events Team
UMD students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends—join us for the OTTRS (external link, opens in a new tab) Speaker Series. (Registration Required)
Abstract:
The Organizational Teams and Technology Research Society (OTTRS) invites you to join us for a moderated discussion on AI and teams between Dr. Ben Shneiderman and Dr. Chirag Shah, facilitated by Dr. Susan Winter. The discussion will cover topics such as whether AI can be a teammate and ways for AI to support teams. The two experts will share how they get interested in this field and future directions for AI-and-team research and practical applications. We will also give time for the audience to ask relevant questions near the end of the discussion.
Event Speakers:
Susan Winter studies the organization of work and the co-evolution of technology and work practices with a recent focus on ethical issues, emerging information technologies, the social and organizational challenges of data reuse, and collaboration among information workers and scientists. Her work has been supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation and by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and resulted in over 80 publications. She previously served as a Science Advisor in the Social Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate, a Program Director, and Acting Deputy Director of the Office of Cyberinfrastructure at the National Science Foundation supporting distributed, interdisciplinary scientific collaboration for complex data-driven and computational science. She received her PhD from the University of Arizona, her MA from the Claremont Graduate University, and her BA from the University of California, Berkeley.
Susan Winter: Associate Dean for Research, University of Maryland College of Information
Ben Shneiderman (external link, opens in a new tab) is an Emeritus Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Computer Science, Founding Director (1983-2000) of the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory, (external link, opens in a new tab) and a Member of the UM Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS) at the University of Maryland. He is a Fellow of the AAAS, ACM, IEEE, NAI, and the Visualization Academy and a Member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. He has received six honorary doctorates in recognition of his pioneering contributions to human-computer interaction and information visualization. Ben is the lead author of Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction (6th ed., 2016). He wrote The New ABCs of Research: Achieving Breakthrough Collaborations (Oxford, 2016) to describe how researchers can increase their impact. His book, Human-Centered AI (Oxford, 2022), won the Association of American Publishers award for Computer and Information Systems.
Ben Shneiderman: Distinguished Unviersity Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland
- References:
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- Ben Shneiderman. (2022). Human-Centered AI. Oxford University Press.
- Ben Shneiderman. (2016). The New ABCs of Research: Achieving Breakthrough Collaborations. Oxford University Press.
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Chirag Shah (external link, opens in a new tab) is a Professor of Information and Computer Science at the University of Washington, where he serves as Founding Director of the InfoSeeking Lab and Founding Co-Director of RAISE (Center for Responsibility in AI Systems & Experiences). His research focuses on AI agents, responsible AI, human-centered information seeking, and agentic information access systems, with a recurring intellectual thread around the “Delegation Paradox” — the tension between human agency and task accomplishment through AI delegation. He has authored nearly 200 peer-reviewed articles and nine books, including the recent Agent Nation (Apress/Springer). He maintains active industry collaborations with Amazon, Microsoft Research, and others, and holds Distinguished Member status in both ACM and ASIS&T. He advises PhD students across proactive conversational search, agentic AI, and LLM evaluation, and contributes regularly to public discourse on responsible AI through press, talks, and editorials.
Chirag Shah: Professor, University of Washington
- References:
- Shah, C. (2026, March). Rethinking Human-AI Collaboration in Information Seeking: Why Epistemic Incompatibility Demands New Design Paradigms. (external link, opens in a new tab) In Proceedings of the 2026 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (pp. 151-161).
- Shah, C., & Tamine, L. Why “human-AI collaboration” obscures what actually happens in information seeking (external link, opens in a new tab). Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIST).
Additional Information:
Please contact infoevents@umd.edu at least one week prior to the event to request disability accommodations. In all situations, a good faith effort (up until the time of the event) will be made to provide accommodations.
For parking information and directions, please visit the Transportation Services website (external link, opens in a new tab) or view the campus map (external link, opens in a new tab).
Speaker(s): Susan Winter, Ben Shneiderman, Chirag Shah