[2] Catherine Plaisant completed her Ph.D. in industrial engineering at Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, France.
[3] She also earned a Diplôme d'Ingénieur from Arts et Métiers ParisTech (one of the French Grandes écoles).
[9][10] Catherine Plaisant was elected to the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) CHI Academy in 2015, for her contributions to the field of study of human–computer interaction.
[13] The chairs are awarded to eminent international researchers to join its project teams.
[15] In 2020 she received the SIGCHI Lifetime Service Award from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).