Andy Cockburn is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, where he directs the Human Computer Interaction Lab.

His research focuses on designing, evaluating and modelling user interfaces, with a focus on understanding and exploiting specific underlying human factors. His contributions include many interface designs that use human spatial memory to support expertise development in basic tasks such as file retrieval, command invocation, window switching, and scrolling.

Dr. Cockburn has served on the Editorial Boards of ACM ToCHI, the Human-Computer Interaction Journal, the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, Interacting with Computers, and Foundations and Trends in Human-Computer Interaction. He was papers co-chair for CHI 2014 and 2015, and technical program co-chair for CHI 2020. He was inducted to the CHI Academy in 2015.