Helena Mentis, PhD
Helena Mentis, PhD, professor and head of the department of information science in the Drexel College of Computing & Informatics (CCI), has been recognized by ACM SIGCHI with its Lifetime Service Award, the organization announced this week.
The Executive Committee of ACM SIGCHI, or the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction, received 107 nominations this year across seven categories and selected 29 for recognition of “remarkable achievements in scholarship, service, mentorship and impact,” according to the association’s announcement.
As one of two SIGCHI members to be honored with the Lifetime Service Award, Mentis will speak at the ACM CHI 2026 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) in Barcelona, Spain, this April.
SIGCHI presents its Lifetime Service Award to “individuals who have contributed to the growth and success of SIGCHI in a variety of capacities. This award is for extended service to the community at large over a number of years.”
Mentis, who has marked 20-plus years of service with ACM SIGCHI, including terms as vice president (2015–18) and president (2018–21), said of the award:
“I am a member of the SIGCHI community whose professional career would not exist without it. But membership in a society does not just mean benefiting from it. We all need to contribute to it to actively ensure it is meeting the community’s needs.”
Mentis’ involvement with the SIGCHI community began in the early 2000s with the founding of three SIGCHI chapters, including PhillyCHI, which is still active today. Over the years, Mentis continued to serve in a variety of capacities, including as chair’s assistant at CHI 2007 when she was still a graduate student and on the organizing committees of the CHI and CSCW (Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing) conferences. She was then elected to the SIGCHI Executive Committee (EC) as vice president and president. While on the SIGCHI EC, Mentis said she successfully “navigated the SIG through the pandemic while achieving infrastructure and fiscal stability for more than 10,000 conference authors and members a year.”
Mentis’ current service roles to the SIGCHI community include past president, SIGCHI EC; editorial board member, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) and ACM Transactions on Computing for Healthcare; member, ACM’s Committee on Professional Ethics (COPE); member (as well as co-founder), SIGCHI’s Committee to Aid REporting on discrimination and haraSsment policy violations (CARES); and technical program chair for the new ACM Interactive Health Conference, which she helped found and receive sponsorship from SIGCHI.
Mentis was appointed head of information science at Drexel CCI in 2024. Prior to joining Drexel, she was a professor in the department of information systems, director of the Center for Responsible and Inclusive Technology, and director of the Bodies in Motion lab in the College of Engineering and Information Technology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). She served as an associate dean for academic programs and learning of that college from 2018 to 2021 and was named a US Fulbright Scholar in 2021.
Her research roles have included posts with the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics, as postdoctoral researcher at Mobile Life in Sweden (2009–10); a postdoctoral fellowship at Microsoft Research Cambridge and Corpus Christi College at the University of Cambridge (2010–12); and a research fellow at Harvard Medical School and the Cambridge Health Alliance (2012–13).
Mentis received a PhD in Information Sciences and Technology from Penn State University, an MS in Communication from Cornell University, and a BS in Psychology from Virginia Tech University.
The Association for Computing Machinery is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society. Of an estimated 38 Special Interest Groups and 170 conferences, SIGCHI ranks among the largest and most active in the ACM.