A breathtaking pace of advances over the last two decades has brought computing to the forefront of science, medicine, commerce, and the arts, transforming the way individuals live, work, learn, play, and communicate. However, with the advent of large amounts of data, computational methods for machine perception, learning, decision-making, and increasing amounts of autonomy and automation, people are sometimes squeezed out of the equation even though the integration of humans with computing solutions often yields the most innovative results. This symposium explores the critical role of people in larger computational solutions—with a focus on recent efforts and opportunities in new forms of human-computer collaboration and symbioses with automated methods designed to work well with people so as to complement their abilities and availabilities. Such efforts include new approaches to visualization, human-in-the-loop strategies for effective monitoring and analysis, principles of mixed-initiative interaction, collaborative computing, and methods for crowdsourcing and “human computation.” Collectively, these strategies stand to power us forward to solutions for current and future global challenges spanning a host of disciplines, including healthcare, transportation, and energy.