Current Status, Position

Prof Katarzyna Wac (PhD) is a Full Professor at the University of Geneva, Switzerland and an Invited Professor of Health Informatics at the Department of Computer Science (DIKU), University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and is affiliated with Stanford University and Medical Centre since 2013. Prof Wac leads Quality of Life (QoL) Technologies lab researching how emerging sensor/actuator-based mobile and wearable technologies can be leveraged for a personalized assessment and improvement of the individual's behaviour and QoL, as they unfold naturally over time and in context. Prof Wac's research appears in more than 100 peer-reviewed conference proceedings and journals in computer science, human-computer interaction and health informatics, and in 2018 she co-edited a book on Digital Health. Prof Wac is a (co)-PI in several European (including H2020), Swiss National Science Foundation projects and Stanford Medicine projects. Prof Wac contributes to the International Telecommunication Union's European Regional Initiative for mHealth and well as consults industry on the topics related to Digital Health. Prof Wac is a keynote speaker, a teacher, and a mentor, and in 2015 was a keynote speaker, a teacher, and a mentor, and in 2015 was a TEDMED Research Scholar. Prof Wac is also a Senior Member of ACM and of the IEEE.

Education

Prof Dr Wac holds a BSc and MSc degree in Computer Science (2003, WUT, Poland), an MSc in Telematics (2004, UT, the Netherlands) and PhD in Information Systems (2009, UNIGE, Switzerland). She has conducted her postdoc research at the Human-Computer Interaction, Carnegie Mellon University (USA) and numerous user studies at Stanford Medical Center.

Research Area

Prof Dr Wac is a computer scientist and her research interests revolve around the fundamental and algorithmic problems of systems enabling an assessment and improvement of human behavior, health and quality of life in the long term.

Conflict of interest: Prof Katarzyna Wac was involved in advisory roles for paid and unpaid activities from Novartis, Merck Group, Lundbeck Samsung, Quantac, HealBe, Amazfit / Huami, Withings, Intel, MigraineBuddy, AARDEX Group, Orchestral Networks and Acaster Lloyd Con. 

She also received a grant for independent research from Google.