In 2019, Eric Yu (left) won the Professor Peter P. Chen (right) award for his contributions to conceptual modelling.
Professor Emeritus Eric Yu, who retired in the summer of 2022, is looking forward to the next stage of his career and building on his best known and most important research in systems analysis and design. While he won’t be teaching, Yu plans to continue collaborating with students, former students and colleagues. He remains as committed as ever to bringing social context into systems analysis.
“What we need is a systems analysis method that responds to the ever more complex sociotechnical environment we have today with both social media and the deep penetration of technology into everyday life,” says Yu. “Systems analysis methods in use today have not caught up with the most significant movement in computing, which is data-driven artificial intelligence. Everyone has a high-powered computer in their pocket or on their wrist, collecting data constantly. Technology systems are now reshaping human experience fundamentally, way beyond what the original system analysis methods were meant to address.”
Yu is well known for the i* framework for modeling sociotechnical systems and organizations, a version of which became part of an international standard. For his contributions to the conceptual modeling community, he received the Peter P. Chen Award in 2019 and the ER Fellow Award in 2022.
As a driving force behind the Faculty of Information’s concentration in Information Systems and Design, Yu forged and maintained strong relationships with his students, several of whom now teach at the Faculty. “In my mind, Eric and the ISD concentration will always be inextricably linked,” said Dean Wendy Duff. “He did so much to build it up into what it is today.”
