Gloria Mark Keynote Speaker

Chancellor’s Professor at the University of California, Irvine
Author of “Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity" from Hanover Square Press
Known as a world expert on understanding our attention, distraction, and wellbeing when we use personal technologies

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Gloria Mark's Biography

Dr. Gloria Mark is Chancellor’s Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine. She has also been a visiting senior researcher at Microsoft Research since 2012. She received her PhD from Columbia University in psychology. Her research concerns understanding the impact of digital media on people’s lives, and she is best known for her work in studying people’s attention behavior while using their computers and phones in real world environments. In 2017 she was inducted into the ACM SIGCHI Academy in recognition for her contribution to the field of human-computer interaction. She has published in the top journals and conferences in this field, has received numerous paper awards, and serves on editorial boards of top journals in the field. She has been a Fulbright scholar and has received the National Science Foundation Career grant. She has been invited to present her work at SXSW and the Aspen Ideas Festival and her work on multitasking has appeared often in the popular media, e.g. New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, The Atlantic, the BBC, and many others. Her book “Attention Span,” was published in January 2023 from Hanover Square Press.

Improving Workplace Well-Being and Productivity

We are living in the digital era and need to understand how we can use our technology productively without experiencing exhaustion and burnout. Our attention is our most valuable currency and we need to optimize it to be productive. Dr. Mark will present the science of attention in the digital age, based on her over two decades of research. She will present a new framework for how we can regain agency over our attention and experience less stress and greater well-being.

Are we reaching a new normal with our attention? How can we prepare for the future of technology and AI?

Dr. Mark has discovered that our attention spans have diminished considerably over the last twenty years, now averaging 47 seconds on any screen. She has also discovered that there are different types of attention that vary over the day depending on our moods, tasks, and context. As we head towards a future of technology where AI will play a strong role, Dr. Mark will discuss how technology and AI will impact our attention, and what we can do to optimize our use of these tools.