Cole Gleason

2024 Distinguished Alumni Service Award

Cole Gleason is a Senior Research Scientist at Apple AI/ML, where he focuses on designing and implementing innovative solutions to make digital and physical environments more inclusive. At Apple, Cole conducts user research to refine products tailored for blind and low-vision users, including computer vision solutions to describe on-device images and real-world environments via smartphone cameras.

Cole develops and evaluates systems that empower people with vision impairments to navigate visual content by employing user-centered research methodologies and leveraging technologies like crowdsourcing and machine learning. In addition to academic conferences such as ASSETS, CHI, and UbiComp, Cole's work has been featured in TIME and the Wall Street Journal.

Cole holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he served as the chair of the local Association Computer for Machinery chapter and the Reflections | Projections conference.

While pursuing a PhD in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University, Cole's research centered on making social media platforms more accessible, explicitly focusing on describing highly visual media like photos, memes, and GIFs.