Katherine Panciera

I'm a third year Ph.D. student at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. I am a member of GroupLens Research, the HCI group in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. My advisor is Loren Terveen, but I also have worked with John Riedl and Joe Konstan. In 2006, I was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. I graduated from Berea College with degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science in 2005. My advisor was Jan Pearce.

My publications center around two experiences:

• Working with five colleagues to understand and explain who is creating content on Wikipedia and how Wikipedia content is destroyed
• Working with Kelly Cannon, Nikos Papanikolopoulos, and the Center for Distributed Robotics to implement and run the University of Minnesota Technology Day Camp for Underrepresented Youth for the past three years

I also have taken a number of HCI courses with projects and my summer undergraduate research was on robotic dispersion.
Currently I'm interested in getting content experts to contribute to Wikipedia as well as evaluating public health information on Wikipedia.

In addition to my research experience, I have extensive teaching experience, in university, middle school, and elementary settings. I served as a TA at the University of Minnesota for three semesters (freshmen through graduate classes) and at Berea College for five semesters. I've spent about six weeks working with middle schoolers at science and technology camps as well as seven weeks at an overnight camp working with nine-year-olds and over a year tutoring elementary school math.

In my spare time I enjoy travel, cooking, and music. I've lived in seven states (from Alaska to Kentucky) and have studied abroad at the University of York in England. I have been on an academic trip to Oaxaca and Chiapas, Mexico, and a choir tour to Italy and Switzerland, including singing during Mass at St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City. I have also traveled independently in Europe, Canada, and the US. Currently I sing with the Plymouth Congregational Church Choir in Minneapolis. This is an auditioned choir conducted by Philip Brunelle. Our spring repertoire is available online. We recorded a cd in September 2006 for the celebration of the church's sesquicentennial.