People

Geraldine Fitzpatrick

Portrait of Geraldine Fitzpatrick
Position
Retired Staff

Contact

Note I am a Retired Professor at TU Wien, as of Oct 2023, and no longer taking on BSc, MSc, PhD students, or peer review requests. I continue working on the Changing Academic Life podcast series (thanks to the HCI Group for support) and doing consulting/training/academic development work towards developing great people and cultures in academia.

What drives me: I focus on people-centred perspectives in complex environments, with an emphasis on enabling positive growth and development and doing more of what is working well. I have expressed this as women-centred midwifery practice in my clinical life as a midwife, as human-centred technology research and teaching in my academic life as a computer scientist, and as facilitating the crafting of a good academic life and of good academic leadership in my professional development work.

Speaking, Consulting, Facilitation, Coaching

Experienced speaker, facilitator, consultant, trainer, coach and podcaster, drawing on international leadership experience in academia, industry and healthcare. Underpinned by a Masters in Applied Positive Psychology and Coaching Psychology, and accreditations as a Strengthscope(R) coach, Action Learning Set Facilitator, personal/executive/team coach, among others.

I equip people with strengths-based knowledge and tools to shape their good professional life, to be effective leaders, and to build great workplace cultures. I have extensive experience facilitating academic leadership, early career researcher, career development and PhD workshops and courses on a variety of topics at >100 universities and organisations across Europe and internationally.

Example engagements at TU Wien:

Academic Leadership Development Course: online and bespoke courses for Informatics Europe. Note: TU Informatics is an IE member for member rates.

Roles at TU Wien

Awards/Recognitions

Teaching From surviving to thriving: Crafting your good professional life [for Doctoral students];

Past teaching: Fundamental Research Methods for Doctoral Students, User Research Methods, Applications in Healthcare, HCI in Healthcare, eHealth Theory & Practice, Mobile Computing in Healthcare, Media Informatics Seminar, Medical Informatics Seminar & Project, Intro to Research Methods for PhD students.

Available for download and re-purposing: a structured exercise for forming effective groups/teams leading to a team charter.

‘Official’ Short Bio

Geraldine Fitzpatrick is a Retired Professor of Technology Design and Assessment. From 2009-2023 she was head of the Human Computer Interaction Group at TU Wien. She is also an ACM Distinguished Scientist, IFIP Fellow, an IFIP TC-13 Pioneer Award recipient, an ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Service Award and a Best Teacher Award recipient. Previously, she was Director of the Interact Lab at the Uni of Sussex, User Experience consultant and Senior Manager at Sapient London, and Snr Researcher at the Distributed Systems Technology Centre (DSTC) and Centre for Online Health in Australia. She has a PhD in Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, an MSc in Applied Positive Psychology and Coaching Psychology, and a prior healthcare background including being in charge of various hospital departments including ENT&Eye operating theatres and outpatients, and gastroenterology, as well as being a midwife and setting up a private midwifery practice to offer women-centred care.

Her research is at the intersection of social and computer sciences, designing and deploying mobile, tangible and sensor-based technologies in everyday contexts, with a particular interest in supporting collaboration, health and well-being, social and emotional skills learning, community building and active engagement for older people. She has a published book and over 300 refereed journal and conference publications in diverse areas such as HCI, CSCW, health informatics, pervasive computing. She sits on various international advisory boards and review panels, and serves in many program committee/chair roles for various CSCW/CHI/health related international conferences, including general co-chair for CHI2019 and papers co-chair for CSCW2018, and on the steering committees for ACM CSCW (2012-17) and ACM CHI.

CV 3 pg summary as at Aug 2024

Forschungsinteressen/Research Interests

Human-Computer Interaction; Design; Computer Supported Cooperative Work; Ubiquitous Computing; Health IT.

Professional involvement - selected examples

Keynote Presentations (selected examples)

Videos of talks

PhD Students

Graduated: Laura Scheepmaker, Matthias Wunsch, Isabel Schwaninger, Franziska Tachtler, Irene Posch, Naemi Luckner, Eva Ganglbauer, Florian Güldenpfennig, Oliver Hödl, Francisco Nunes, Petr Slovak, Jean Hallewell, Katta Spiel, Gareth White, Penman Mirza-Babaei, Chris Kiefer, Manueal Jungmann, Dave Harley, Rowanne Fleck, Harry Brignull.

Previous Masters Students - EPILOG winners Janis Meissner Distinguished Young Alumna-Award of the Faculty of Informatics June 2016 - Tools for Wools: Learning from and designing for Urban Knitters. Jasmin Grosinger - Diploma Thesis Award Nov 2012 - Agile Life: Persuasive Touch Interface Technology for Enhancing Older Adults’ Levels of Physical Activity.

Past projects and research themes

Selected Publications

See Google Scholar; See also the HCI Group Publications Page

PhD Thesis - The Locales Framework: Understanding and designing for wicked problems Uni of Queensland, Australia, 1998