Ancient History
Job Market Materials
When I went on the academic job market in 2016, I found it enormously helpful to read other people's statements. In particular, I found
Scott Aaronson's research statement inspirational, even though he's in Quantum Mechanics, which is pretty far from HCI. I resonated with how boldly he addressed fundamental questions. It reminded me of Richard Hamming's directive to make sure you work on the most important problems.
If you are on the job market and looking for examples of application materials, you are welcome to mine.
Job Talk Slides (download)
CV
Research Statement
Teaching Statement
List of References
Sloan Fellowship
In 2025, I was fortunate enough to receive a Sloan Fellowship. I'm very grateful, but I also know how hard it is to be rejected from so many things. If it is of any help, here are my Sloan Fellowship research statements: my 2024 research statement that was awarded, and my 2022 research statement that was not awarded.
I asked my friend DeepSeek what the difference was between my awarded statement and the rejected one. I agree with DeekSeek that in the awarded version, I broadened the range of applications of my approach. Before, I had only applied my computational design approach to generating creative media. But from 2022 to 2024 I focused on applying it to other domains, like designing software and productivity tools. Fundamental techiques are a lot stronger when you can show they work in many diverse domains. It just took me time to show that.
What DeepSeek missed is that I also pivoted my central research question. In 2022, the central question was "how can we decompose creativity?" but in 2024, the central question was "what is the structure of human-AI collaboration?" I personally think both are fundamental and hard questions, but the issue of "human-AI collaboration" is very immediate. It's a question we need answered now.
Immediacy is always powerful.
Lydia Chilton's Sloan Fellowship 2024 (awarded)
Lydia Chilton's Sloan Fellowship 2022 (not awarded)
Why was the second one awarded? (Deep Seek's insightful analysis)
