August 24, 2009Gary Olson Named A Fellow Of The APA Experimental Psychology Division
Gary Olson, Bren Professor of Information and Computer Sciences, has been named a Fellow of the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Experimental Psychology Division (Division 3). Olson is recognized for his outstanding contributions to the field of experimental psychology. In June, Gary was also named a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, in recognition for his contributions to both basic and applied psychological science.
The APA is a professional organization representing psychologists in the U.S., with around 150,000 members. Fellow status is an honor bestowed upon APA Members who have shown evidence of unusual and outstanding contributions or performance in the field of psychology.
Olson, author of more than 100 published research articles, has dedicated his work to understanding how technology can support remote collaboration. In studying the behavioral aspects of computer usage, he used his foundations in psychological science to frame research questions about how people used information technology and the effects of such usage.
By the mid 1980s Olson was focusing on the behavior of small teams who were using networked technology to support collaboration. Much of this work examined collaborations among scientists, and was supported primarily by the National Science Foundation.
A recently published book, Scientific Collaboration on the Internet (MIT Press, 2008) summarizes much of this work. The book contains conceptual chapters that summarize a series of working hypotheses about why some long-distance collaborations succeed, and others fail. This research continues to this day and is being extended to teams working in companies.
He also has made important contributions to the studies of management practice and the cultural aspects of collaboration, as well as the complex socio-technical issues surrounding technology design. Olson’s earliest research was in memory in human infants, and psycholinguistic studies of text processing.
Olson received his Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Stanford University in 1970. He is also an elected member of the CHI Academy, the premier organization of human-computer interaction, the recipient of the CHI Lifetime Achievement Award, and a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.
