Stefanie Mueller

Stefanie Mueller is the TIBCO Career Development Associate Professor at MIT, jointly appointed in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering. She leads the HCI Engineering Group within CSAIL, where her research explores how advances in fabrication, materials, and computational design can fundamentally reshape the way people interact with physical objects. Her work develops new methods for creating appearance-changing surfaces, embedding sensing into deformable or moving geometries, designing trackable markers for interaction, and enabling rapid prototyping on complex 3D forms. A key theme in her lab is the integration of algorithms, machine learning, hardware innovation, and material science to expand the capabilities of everyday objects beyond their traditional constraints. Mueller’s research frequently appears in CHI, UIST, SIGGRAPH, and other top venues, and her work has been recognized with honors including a UIST Best Paper Award. Before joining the MIT faculty, she trained at Harvard and the HCI communities across Europe. Her group strives to make fabrication more accessible, expressive, and intelligent for designers, engineers, and learners.