University of Maryland

Interested in a long visit?

Industrial Visitors

We often welcome visitors from industry who send their employees, engineers, and researchers to join the HCIL for an extended period of time (e.g., 6 months, 1 year, 1.5 years). Our industry visitors have come from all over the world. Industrial visitors come to learn about HCI, American culture, technology, and specific projects. These arrangements have enriched the HCIL tremendously, while also developing expertise and skills for individuals who can bring them back to their companies.

Past visitors have come from Sony, Toyota, Toshiba, NEC etc.

We work with visitors to create custom programs that are valuable to all parties. We typically can offer:

  • Active participation in a research project based on mutual interest and available opportunities.
  • Ability to participate as an HCIL lab member, joining for lunches, lab activities, social events, etc.
  • Ability to take UMD courses (upon permission of instructor).
  • Attend HCIL and UMD seminars and other events.
  • Ability to participate in UMD activities and use UMD resources such as the bus and gym.
  • Office space, computer, internet, printing, and other technical infrastructure etc.

Please contact the HCIL director or hcil-info@cs.umd.edu if you are interested in arranging an industry visit.

Academic Visitors

We host academic visitors who visit the HCIL between one semester and one year and join an existing project. We have had M.S. and Ph.D. students come to work with us in an area closely related to their own research. We have had these visitors from other U.S. universities as well as universities from other countries which have foreign research requirements. Recent visitors have come from Italy, Denmark, Finland, Israel, Spain, and South Africa. In addition, we welcome faculty interested in spending a sabbatical here.

We do not fund academic visitors. Those with their own funds that are interested in visiting the HCIL should contact the lab director, Niklas Elmqvist. We have found the most productive visits to occur when there are shared interests, and there is a specific existing project that the visitor would like to join. We also like to encourage visits that are a minimum of 3 months which is just enough time to do some research and write a paper – which we always expect to be the primary outcome of such a visit. If interested, please send information about yourself, your research, and what you would like to do at the HCIL to hcil-info@cs.umd.edu, or (better) to a faculty member who is working on your topic of study.