Prof. Dr. Kai Kunze has held the W3 professorship for Human-Centered Information Systems at the Institut für Informatik of TU Clausthal since 2026. Before his appointment he was Professor at the Graduate School of Media Design at Keio University in Yokohama, Japan. Earlier he was Assistant Professor at Osaka Prefecture University. He received his PhD from the University of Passau.

The research of the chair has three lines. Augmented Perception develops smart eyewear and other wearables as a hardware platform for sensing and actuation close to the senses. The devices measure physiological signals such as electrodermal activity (EDA), eye movement (EOG) and motion without getting in the wearer's way. Cognitive Augmentation covers cognitive sensing and interaction, for example gaze synchronization and the tracking of reading and attention, and applies both to cognitive health, including dementia prevention. Digitalized Emotion is about sensing, transferring and sharing emotional states. Two projects in this line, BoilingMind and Frisson Waves, recorded audience physiology during live performances.

The group's methods are physiological assessment (EDA, EOG, motion sensing) and rapid hardware prototyping of wearable interaction systems. Prototypes are evaluated in laboratory and field studies, with quantitative and qualitative methods.

Three goals guide the chair. The first is technology for cognitive health and dementia prevention, developed with partners from neuroscience, computer science and the health sciences. The second is accessible, barrier-free human-machine interaction; planned Living Labs with municipal partners and health institutions will test systems in real living environments. The third is sustainable, emotional interaction: Digitalized-Emotion systems record emotional responses to environmental problems and are meant to support sustainable behaviour.

Kai Kunze has published more than 250 papers at venues including CHI, UIST, TOCHI and IEEE Computer. His h-index is 40 (Google Scholar). He served as PC co-chair of TEI 2017 and as local co-chair of CHI 2021. Research stays and internships led him to the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), the MIT Media Lab, Sun Microsystems Labs Europe and Deutsche Börse. He is known for his work on eyewear computing and on activity recognition that stays robust across sensor placements.

At the ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2026 (DIS '26) his group received a Best Paper Award for "Floating Companion: Exploring Design Space for Lighter-than-Air Soft Floating Robots in Indoor Environments" and an Honourable Mention for "Creating Empowering Counter-Narratives through Collective Digital Art by Disabled People".

At TU Clausthal the chair works with the Wirtschaftsinformatik groups at the Institut für Informatik  The chair also takes part in the NaMeKi research network. 

External collaboration partners of the chair are Norscope, CareCloud and the Graduate School of Media Design at Keio University in Yokohama.