Carroll named Fellow of the International Federation for Information Processing

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Jack Carroll, distinguished professor in Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), has been named a Fellow of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP). Carroll will be formally inducted into the organization’s second cohort of Fellows in September 2021 at a ceremony at the Maison de l’UNESCO in Paris.

The Fellow Award recognizes individuals of the highest professional standing and expertise who have made substantial and enduring contributions to the information and communications technologies and sciences. Established in 1960 with support from UNESCO as a result of the first World Computer Congress, IFIP is the nongovernmental global organization for researchers and professionals in the field that represents IT societies from 38 countries and regions.

"It is an honor and a thrill to receive this recognition from IFIP,” said Carroll. “I hope I am able to go to Paris next year and reminisce about human-computer interaction when it was just an intriguing possibility."

Carroll is a founder and leading researcher in the field of human-computer interaction, which combines social and cognitive science with information technology and design. With a background in mathematics, linguistics and psychology, his research interests include community innovation, health informatics and wellbeing, coproduction, and the transformation of everyday life through information technology.

His landmark book, “The Nurnberg Funnel,” presented a minimalist approach to instructional design by having the learner — rather than the instructor — determine the methods of instruction to maximize active engagement based on their needs. In 2015, Popular Science named him the “Man Who Killed The Manual” for his development of the minimalist information and instructional design model.

At Penn State, he serves as director of Penn State’s Center for Human-Computer Interaction and co-director of the College of IST’s Collaboration and Innovation Laboratory. He holds courtesy appointments as professor from the colleges of Engineering, Education and Liberal Arts. In 2018, he received a Faculty Scholar Medal in Social and Behavioral Sciences from Penn State.

Carroll has earned three lifetime achievement awards from the Association for Computing Machinery and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and has been elected a fellow or honorary fellow of eight scholarly societies. He has written 27 books and more than 300 research papers, and has received more than 50 research grants.