CREATE is a consortium of innovators from the University of Washington’s computer science, mechanical engineering, human-centered design and engineering, information school, and rehabilitation medicine and disability studies.
CREATE leadership comprises our Director, Jennifer Mankoff; Director for Education, Mark Harniss; nine associate directors, and professional staff. Together with faculty, they work to ensure that the next generation of developers, engineers, and innovators are champions of accessibility. Postdoctoral research fellows, students, and visitors collaborate with us on accessibility research and help translate research to real-world solutions.
Our Director of Strategy and Operations, Community Engagement and Partnerships Manager, and Digital Content Developer build relationships with our industry and community partners through research, involvement, events, and information.
Leadership and professional staff
Jennifer Mankoff, CREATE Director
Richard E. Ladner Professor, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering; Director, Make4all Lab
Dr. Mankoff’s accessibility research emphasizes intersectionality and perspectives such as disability studies. Her work in Deaf/Hard of Hearing (DHH) technology explores how people who are multilingual engage with communication technology. Another focus is creating general tools so that anyone can use them, such as 3D printing, knitting, and other fabrication technologies. Mankoff has led the effort to better understand both clinical and do-it-yourself (DIY) stakeholders’ use of fabrication technologies, and has developed better, more usable tools for production to enhance the capabilities and participation of all users in today’s manufacturing revolution.
Mark Harniss, Director for Education
Associate Professor, Rehabilitation Medicine; Director, Center for Technology and Disability Studies and UW Disability Studies Program
Dr. Harniss’ research focuses on knowledge translation, assistive technology, and accessible design. He teaches in both the Disability Studies Program and the Rehabilitation Medicine doctoral program with an emphasis on knowledge translation and disability policy. He leads projects focused on developing decision aids to support people with disabilities to request reasonable accommodations and on developing an accommodation expert support system for people who are aging.
Olivia Banner, Director of Strategy and Operations
Dr. Banner is a disabled author and educator who has taught courses on disability, technology, and media. She came to Seattle and the UW from the University of Texas at Dallas, where she was an associate professor of Critical Media Studies.
Kathleen Quin Voss, Community Engagement and Partnerships Manager
Kathleen Voss joined CREATE in 2022 as its inaugural Community Engagement and Partnerships Manager. She increases the impact and reach of CREATE’s research by developing and maintaining partnerships with community organizations and by promoting engagement with CREATE’s local, national, and international network of community members.
Liz Diether-Martin, Digital Content Developer and Editor
Liz Diether-Martin joined CREATE in 2020 as its Digital Content Developer. She develops CREATE’s accessible web content, produces news articles, and manages newsletters and CREATE’s Trumba event calendar.
Contact Liz with website updates, events to publicize, and news or publications to share
Associate Directors
Anat Caspi, Associate Director
Affiliate Assistant Professor, Electrical & Computer Engineering; Director, Taskar Center for Accessible Technology
Dr. Caspi is interested in exploring ways in which collaborative commons and cooperation can challenge and transform the current economics of assistive technology and incentivize rapid development and deployment of ethically built accessible technologies. Her research focuses on engineering machine intelligent solutions for customizable real-time, responsive technologies in the context of work, play and urban street environments.
Heather Feldner, Associate Director
Assistant Professor, UW Medicine Rehabilitation Medicine: Physical Therapy; Core Faculty, UW Disability Studies; Affiliate Faculty, Center for Technology and Disability Studies; Director, IMPACT Collaboratory
Dr. Feldner’s focus is on advancing participation and health together with people with disabilities and their families by exploring the intersections between mobility, disability, and technology in a variety of personal and environmental contexts. Her research centers on the design and implementation of mobility assistive technology, including how perceptions of disability and identity emerge and evolve through technology use.
Leah Findlater, Associate Director
Associate Professor, Human Centered Design & Engineering; Adjunct Associate Professor, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering; Director, Inclusive Design Lab
Dr. Findlater is interested in how to create technologies that adapt to accommodate individual user needs and preferences, whether to improve basic interactions such as touchscreen text entry or more complex tasks such as working with machine learning models. Her research goal is to ensure that the next generation of computing technologies are designed to meet the needs of the broadest range of users.
James Fogarty, Associate Director
Professor, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering
Dr. Fogarty’s broad research interests are in Human-Computer Interaction, User Interface Software and Technology, and Ubiquitous Computing. His focus is on developing, deploying, and evaluating new approaches to the human obstacles surrounding widespread everyday adoption of ubiquitous sensing and intelligent computing technologies.
Jon E. Froehlich, Associate Director
Professor, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering; Core Faculty, Urban Design and Planning, College of Built Environments; Director, Makeability Lab; PI, Project Sidewalk
Dr. Froelich’s research focuses on designing, building, and evaluating interactive technology that addresses high value social issues such as environmental sustainability, computer accessibility, and personalized health and wellness.
Katherine M. Steele, Associate Director
Peterson Endowed Professor of Mechanical Engineering; Director, Neuromechanics & Mobility Lab; Co-Director, AMP Lab; Founder and Faculty Advisor, HuskyADAPT; Co-Founder and Co-PI, AccessEngineering
Dr. Steele’s research focuses upon using novel computational and experimental tools to understand human movement and improve treatment and quality of life of individuals with cerebral palsy, stroke, and other neurological disorders. She strives to connect engineering and medicine to create solutions that can advance our understanding of human ability, but also translate research results to the clinic and daily life.
Jacob O. Wobbrock, Associate Director,
Founding Co-Director Emeritus
Professor, The Information School; Adjunct Professor, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering; Director, ACE Lab
Dr. Wobbrock seeks to scientifically understand people’s performance and experiences with interactive technologies, and to design, build, and evaluate better interaction techniques and systems, especially for people with disabilities. He has done extensive work in text entry, pointing, touch, and gesture; human performance measurement and modeling; HCI research and design methods; virtual reality; mobile HCI; and accessible computing. He considers himself a blend of computer scientist, interaction designer, and experimental psychologist.
Faculty members
Interested in joining CREATE? Learn more about becoming a faculty member.
Cecilia Aragon
Professor, Human Centered Design & Engineering. Director, Human-Centered Data Science Lab.
Kim Ingraham
Assistant Professor, Electrical & Computer Engineering; Adjunct Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering. Director, Ingraham Lab. Former CREATE postdoctoral researcher, 2021-23.
Stephanie Kerschbaum
Professor of English. Director of the Program in Writing and Rhetoric.
Julie Kientz
Professor and Chair, Human Centered Design & Engineering. Director, Computing for Healthy Living and Learning Lab.
Amy J. Ko
Professor and Associate Dean for Academics, The Information School. Director, Code & Cognition Lab.
Richard Ladner, Founding Director for Education Emeritus
Professor Emeritus, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. Principal Investigator, AccessComputing and AccessCSforAll.
Kevin Lin
Assistant Teaching Professor, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. Co-director, Center for Learning, Computing, and Imagination.
Meredith Ringel Morris
Affiliate Professor, The Information School and Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. Director and Principal Scientist of the People + AI Research team at Google Research.
Sushil K. Oswal
Professor, School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences. Affiliate faculty in the Disability Studies Program.
Wanda Pratt
Professor, The Information School. Adjunct Professor, University of Washington Medical School, Division of Biomedical & Health Informatics.
Katharina Reinecke
Professor and Associate Director of Research and Communication, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering.
CREATE postdoctoral fellows
Stacy Hsueh
Postdoctoral Researcher, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. 2023-26.
Jazette Johnson
Postdoctoral Researcher, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. 2024-25.
Goal: Explore the impact of AI-generated images on adults and elders with intellectual and developmental disabilities—persuasive and difficult-to-detect misinformation in particular.
Bethany M. Sloane
Postdoctoral Researcher, UW Medicine – Rehabilitation Medicine. 2024-25. Research focus: powered mobility and assistive technology interventions for young children with cerebral palsy.
Emma J. McDonnell
Participating UW Postdoctoral Researcher, Biomedical Informatics and Medical Engineering, co-appointed in the iSchool, 2024-25. Research goal: Explore how accessibility and disability studies perspectives could inform the design of health-focused technologies.
Visiting faculty
None at this time.
Alumni
Past postdoctoral researchers
- Kelly Avery Mack, 2024-25 (also a CREATE Ph.D. graduate). Apple AI/ML Resident Researcher.
- Tamanna Motahar, 2024-25. Assistant Professor, School of Computing & Informatics, University of Louisiana at Lafayette
- Anthony Osuna, 2024-25. Acting Assistant Professor in the UW Department of Pediatrics.
- Sasha Portnova, 2022-24. Lab Engineer, Steele Lab.
- Maitraye Das, 2022-23. Assistant Professor, Khoury College of Computer Sciences and the College. of Arts, Media and Design at Northeastern University
- Momona Yamagami, 2022-23. Assistant Professor at Rice University Electrical & Computer Engineering.
- Abigale Stangl, 2021-23. Assistant Professor, Georgia Tech School of Industrial Design.
- Kim Ingraham, 2021-23. Assistant Professor, UW Electrical & Computer Engineering.
Past visiting faculty and scholars
- Kirsten Ellis, Associate Professor, Monash University, Faculty of Information Technology, Australia. Spring 2025.
- Jason Wiese, Associate Professor, Kahlert School of Computing at University of Utah and Director, Personal Data and Empowerment Lab. Hosted by Jen Mankoff, Autumn 2024.
- Matthew Butler, Associate Professor, Department of Human Centred Computing, Monash University, Australia. Visiting scholar, hosted by Jen Mankoff and the Make4all Lab. 2022-23.
- Emily Whiting, Associate Professor, Computer Science, Boston University. Visiting Scholar in Human Centered Design & Engineering and Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. 2022-23.