Conferences (in the order of importance for me)

• SIGGRAPH A few interaction papers appear each year, and they are really good.
• UIST This conference focuses on the technology aspects of HCI.
• SIGCHI This conference discusses more about evaluation and design recently.
• Interactive 3D Graphics Technology-oriented biannual conference.
• Graphics Interface, IFIP Interact, CSCW others...

People and Group (each page is worth visiting!)

• Ken Perlin He won an academy award for his noise function. He also invented zooming UI.
• Brown Graphics Group Home of 3D Widgets, SKETCH and art-based renderling.
• CMU Stage3 The home of Alice. Directed by Prof. Randy Pausch.
• Jun Rekimoto He invented NaviCam and Pick&Drop. Directing SONY CSL Interaction Lab.
• Ben Bederson He is working on Zooming UI. Directing HCIL, Univ. of Maryland.
• James A. Landay He is working on various pen-based interfaces at Berkley.
• Bill Buxton Chief Scientist of Alias|Wavefront. Famous for pie-menu, MagicLens, and two-handed UI.

Research Institutes (place to work?)

• Microsoft Research (MSR) D.Salesin, D.Kurlander, K.Hinckley, G.Robertson
• Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) J.Mackinlay, K.Edwards, T.Moran, E.Bier
• Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL) J.Marks, H.Pfister
• HCI Institute, Carnegie Mellon University R.Pausch, S.Hudson, B.Myers
• GVU Center, Georgia Tech G.Abowd, B.Mynatt, B.Macintyre, G.Turk
• Dynamic Graphics Project, Tronto Ravin Balakrishnan, Karan Singh, Aaron Herzmann
• Media Lab, MIT H.Ishii, J.Maeda, P.Maes
• Walt Disney Imagineering Alan Kay
• GMD IPSI (Germany) N.Streitz, J.Geissler
• SONY Computer Science Lab (Tokyo) J.Rekimoto, T.Masui
• ATR MIC, ETL, NTT Communication Science Lab (Japan)

Resources

• ACM Digital Library you can download PDF version of SIGGRAPH/UIST/CHI papers.
• Google Best search engine ever. I cannot do research without this...
• Recommended Readings by Gary Perlman.