Alexander Charles Kirlik

Alexander Charles Kirlik, age 64, of Chicago, IL, died October 8, 2025 after an extended illness. 

Born October 17, 1960 in Indiana, PA, Alex grew up along the shores of Lake Erie near Cleveland, OH, where he graduated from Bay Village High School (1979), followed by BS (1983), MS, and PhD (1989) degrees in systems engineering from The Ohio State University. 

There, Alex began a 35-year teaching and research program on cognitive science & engineering, human factors, and human-computer interaction, focused on modeling and designing technology to support people in challenging, cognitive tasks. His NASA sponsored PhD thesis, providing a computational model of human cognition and expertise as perceptually guided skill, won the George E. Briggs award from the American Psychological Association as best dissertation of the year in Engineering and Applied Psychology. In 1989, he became assistant and then associate professor of systems engineering, computing, and cognitive science at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, followed by joining the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in 2002, where he taught for more than 20 years as professor of computer science, systems engineering and member of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, retiring in 2022 as emeritus professor.

Alex particularly enjoyed the many opportunities for collaboration and collegiality afforded by his profession. During his academic career he held visiting (summer or year) positions in engineering or psychology at Stanford University, Yale University, the University of Connecticut, Haskins Laboratories, Draper Laboratories, the Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety, and NASA Ames Research Center. He was author/editor of 4 books, over 100 articles in peer reviewed journals, conference proceedings and books, and gave over 100 invited lectures, both nationally and internationally on topics at the intersection of psychology and technology. He was founding editor of the highly multidisciplinary Oxford Series in Human Technology Interaction, a book series he started in 2006. 

Alex was also sought after as a teacher and mentor: in addition to his hundreds of classroom students, he advised numerous BS Honors, MS and PhD theses in engineering, computer science and psychology; his former students going on to a wide variety of senior positions in academia and industry.

While living in Atlanta, Alex met Anna T. Cianciolo, and they were married in New Haven, CT in 2002; their marriage ended in divorce in 2014 in Champaign, IL, with no children. Alex is survived by his mother, Nancy Hanmer of Annapolis, MD, sisters, Ann Friedman of Tucson, AZ and Kathleen Rumfola of Potomac, MD, a stepsister, Amy Hanmer of Manchester, NH, and 5 nephews, Alex and Will Friedman, and Corey, Drew and Aaron Rumfola. 

According to his wishes, Alex’s body was cremated. In lieu of flowers or services, donations in his memory may be made to the Lake Erie Nature & Science Center of Bay Village, OH, where Alex first learned to identify and name some of the fish he could find and catch in lakes and streams, and to find and name some of the constellations among the stars.

Aftercare entrusted to Chicagoland Cremation Options of Schiller Park, IL