Ted Selker innovates and mentors’ innovation for startups, large corporations and universities. Specializing in seeding and driving strategic initiatives, he is known for guiding, emerging technology opportunities. His publications prototypes, patents and products span areas such as AI user modelling and user experience and visualization. A current effort for example considersg curated knowledge in the time of generative AI
He has had notable strategic innovation roles at Alphyco, Amazon, Atari, Browne and Sharpe, CMU IBM, Magic Leap, Moto Carma, PARC, Stanford, and Weyerhaeuser. His clients have included companies such as Colgate, Google, E-government, Herman Miller, IBM, ITRI, Mars, MasterCard,Nortel, PIXAR, Philips, Philip Morris, Sanyang Motors, OLPC, Willow Garage.
Ted spent five years creating a graduate research program at Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley and running the considerate systems research program. Ted spent ten years as an Associate Professor at the MIT Media Laboratory running the Context Aware Computing & the Industrial Design intelligence research programs. His work shows how human intentions can be recognized and respected in complex domains such as kitchens, cars, on phones, and in email. Ted’s work takes the form of prototyping concept products supported by cognitive science research. His research created specific emerging technology opportunities for ALPS, Amazon, Brother, British Telecom, Campbell’s soup, Cleanup kitchens, Chrysler, Ford, Giant, Hallmark, Kaiser Permanente, Lear, Lego, McDonalds, Merloni, Motorola, Ricoh, Panasonic, Saab, Samsung, Steel case, Swatch, Panasonic, Pepsi, Post cereals, TCL, USPS, for the voting industry, and others.
Ted’s successes at IBM gained him the technical executive position of IBM Fellow. He created and directed the User Systems Ergonomics Research lab there. USER is known for its many profitable product impacts. He has served as a consulting professor at Stanford University, taught at Hampshire, University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Brown Universities, RIT, AARHUS University, Telecom Paris Tech and university of Maryland Baltimore and lectured at many others universities as well.
Recent products include AlphyReflect, C3.chat, Motocarma, Unltascanguide, PEEP-Alert. Ted's work has been central to successes of products ranging from notebook and workstation computers to operating systems. For example, his design of the TrackPoint in-keyboard pointing device is used in many notebook computers, his visualizations have been responsible for performance and usability improvements in products and his adaptive help system was the basis of OS/2 SmartGuides. Ted’s work has resulted in numerous awards, patents, and papers and has often been featured in the press. Ted was co-recipient of the Computer Science Policy Leader Award for Scientific American 50, the American Association for People with Disabilities Thomas Paine Award for his work on voting technology and the Telluride Tech fest award.