On June 27, the Best Teaching Awards were presented for the seventh time by the Vice Rectorate for Academic Affairs. In the ceremonial setting of the Kuppelsaal, committed teachers and extraordinary courses were honored. The special prize “Gender-sensitive teaching” was awarded to courses that were designed with a visible focus on gender sensitivity.

The Best Teacher Award 2023 for Informatics goes to Geraldine Fitzpatrick from our Research Unit for Human Computer Interaction.

Congratulations to the winners, and special thanks to all our students for their nominations and their active participation in our courses and lectures.

About Geraldine Fitzpatrick

Geraldine Fitzpatrick is Professor of Technology Design and Assessment and heads the Research Unit for Human Computer Interaction. She is an ACM Distinguished Scientist, IFIP Fellow, an IFIP TC-13 Pioneer Award recipient, and an ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Service Award recipient. Previously, she was Director of the Interact Lab at the Uni of Sussex, User Experience consultant and Senior Manager at Sapient London, and Snr Researcher at the Distributed Systems Technology Centre (DSTC) and Center for Online Health in Australia. She has a PhD in Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, a MSc in Applied Positive Psychology and Coaching Psychology, and a prior healthcare background including being in charge of various hospital departments including ENT operating theatres, as well as setting up a private practice.

Her research is at the intersection of social and computer sciences to support social interaction using mobile, tangible and sensor-based technologies in everyday contexts, with a particular interest in supporting collaboration, health and well-being, social and emotional skills learning, community building and active engagement for older people. She has a published book and over 200 refereed journal and conference publications in diverse areas such as HCI, CSCW, health informatics, pervasive computing. She sits on various international advisory boards and review panels, and serves in many program committee/chair roles for various CSCW/CHI/health related international conferences, most recently general co-chair for CHI2019 and papers co-chair for CSCW2018, and on the steering committees for ACM CSCW (2012-17) and ACM CHI (current).

About Best Teaching Award

The Best Teacher Award honors particularly committed teachers at the TU Wien. The award does not refer to an individual course, but to the entire teaching performance of the lecturer. Each semester, almost 30,000 students are supervised in more than 2,100 courses at the TU Wien. Our lecturers remarkable performance is the basis for the excellent reputation and worldwide success of TU Wien graduates.

The aim of the Best Teaching Awards is to put committed teachers in the spotlight and thus to honor their commitment. “What is important in teaching is not only what is taught, but especially how it is done. And this is also how the trophy is to be understood: The owl embodies the wisdom that is more in demand now than ever before,” summarizes Kurt Matyas, Vice Rector for Academic Affairs.

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