Rex Hartson coordinates a research group about Human Computer Interaction at Virginia Tech and they are pretty good. He's also the author of this book: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-UX-Book-Guidelines-Experience/dp/0123852412" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/The-UX-Book-Guidelines-Experience/dp/0...</a>.
Also Brad Myers in Carnegie Melon (leading the Human-Computer Interaction Institute). <a href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam/</a>