Hiroshi Ishii is the Jerome B. Wiesner Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Laboratory, where he also holds positions as Associate Director of the Media Lab and Director of the Tangible Media Group. In computer science, he is recognized as a founder of Tangible User Interfaces. He received his B.E. degree in electronic engineering from Hokkaido University in 1978, M.E. in computer engineering in 1980, and Ph.D. in computer engineering in 1992 from the same institution. Before joining the MIT Media Lab in October 1995, Ishii led the Computer-Supported Cooperative Work research group at NTT Human Interface Laboratories in Japan from 1988 to 1994, where he invented the TeamWorkStation in 1990 and ClearBoard in 1992. He was awarded tenure at MIT in 2001.

Ishii's research specializations include Tangible User Interfaces, the vision of Tangible Bits introduced in 1997, and Radical Atoms proposed in 2012, aiming to give physical form to digital information and advance shape-changing user interfaces. His seminal publications encompass "Tangible Bits: Towards Seamless Interfaces between People, Bits and Atoms" (CHI 1997), "Bricks: Laying the Foundations for Graspable User Interfaces" (CHI 1995), "Emerging Frameworks for Tangible User Interfaces" (IBM Systems Journal 2000), "ClearBoard: A Seamless Medium for Shared Drawing and Conversation with Eye Contact" (CHI 1992), "The metaDESK: Models and Prototypes for Tangible User Interfaces" (UIST 1997), and "inFORM: Dynamic Physical Affordances and Constraints through Shape and Object Actuation" (UIST 2013). Ishii has received major awards including the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Research Award in 2019 for contributions to human-computer interaction, election to the CHI Academy in 2006, and ACM Fellowship in 2022. His work has had profound impact on the field, spawning the ACM International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction since 2007 and featuring in exhibitions at Ars Electronica, NTT ICC, and others worldwide.

Professional Email: ishii@media.mit.edu