Susan Dumais facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Susan T. Dumais
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Susan Dumais in 2009 in her office at Microsoft Research
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| Born | |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Indiana University Bates College |
| Known for | Human Computer Interaction Information Retrieval |
| Awards | ACM-W Athena Lecturer Award (2014)
SIGCHI Lifetime Achievement Award (2020) SIGIR Academy (2021) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Computer Science |
| Institutions | Microsoft Research |
| Doctoral advisor | Richard M. Shriffin |
| Doctoral students | Jeff Huang |
Susan Dumais is a famous American computer scientist. She was born on August 11, 1953. She is a top expert in how computers find information. She has helped make Microsoft's search engines much better. Experts say her work has changed how people use computers. It also changed how computers find information. In 2025, she became a member of the American Philosophical Society.
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About Susan Dumais
Susan Dumais works at Microsoft. She is a "Technical Fellow," which is a very high position. She also leads several Microsoft research labs. These labs are in New England, New York, and Montreal.
Her Research at Microsoft
At Microsoft, Susan Dumais studies many interesting things. She looks at how people use their eyes when interacting with computers. She also studies how information systems change over time. Her work includes understanding what users like and how to make things personal for them. She also creates new ways for people to find information. This includes making search tools easier to use. She is also a professor at the University of Washington Information School. There, she helped guide Jeff Huang, who is now a computer science professor.
Before Microsoft: Bellcore
Before joining Microsoft in 1997, Susan Dumais worked at a company called Bellcore. This company is now known as Telcordia Technologies. At Bellcore, she and her team studied a big problem. This problem is now called the "vocabulary problem" in information retrieval.
The Vocabulary Problem
Imagine you are looking for information online. You might use certain words to search. But the person who wrote the information might use different words. Susan Dumais and her team showed that this happens a lot. Different people use different words to describe the same thing. Even if you pick the "best" word, others might not find it. This means that old ways of searching often missed important information. This is because the words used to write a document might not match the words someone uses to search for it.
Solving the Problem: Latent Semantic Indexing
Because of the vocabulary problem, Susan Dumais and her team looked for new solutions. They wanted to build search systems that could understand meaning better. They invented something called Latent Semantic Indexing. This new method helps computers find information even if the exact words don't match. It looks for hidden connections between words and ideas.
Awards and Honors
Susan Dumais has received many important awards for her work. These awards show how much she has helped the field of computer science.
- In 2006, she became a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. This is a high honor for computer scientists.
- In 2009, she received the Gerard Salton Award. This award is given for a lifetime of great work in finding information.
- In 2011, she joined the National Academy of Engineering. She was recognized for her new ideas in organizing and finding information.
- In 2014, she received the Athena Lecturer Award. This was for her important contributions to computer science. She also won the Tony Kent Strix award. This award is for her new and useful ideas that have made a big impact.
- In 2015, she became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
- In 2020, she received the SIGCHI Lifetime Research Award.
- In 2021, she was inducted into the ACM SIGIR Academy.
See also
In Spanish: Susan Dumais para niños
