Sean M. McNee, Ph.D.
University of Minnesota

I am the Computing Research Scientist at Attenex Corporation where I perform basic and applied research in visual analytics, information filtering/retrieval, data mining, user modeling, computer-supported cooperative work, and human-computer interaction.

I received my Ph.D. from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota--Twin Cities. I was (am) a member of GroupLens Research where I performed research in the areas of recommender systems, user modeling, and human-computer interaction.

Projects included:

• Exploring the use of recommender systems to generate research paper recommendations in a digital library environment
• Creating new metrics for analyzing collaborative filtering algorithms
• Developing methodologies for tuning recommender systems to meet user information seeking needs

Advisor: Professor Joseph A. Konstan.

If you'd like to see a concrete example of the kind of research that GroupLens performs, please visit MovieLens, our online movie recommender system. MovieLens uses collaborative filtering to generate personalized movie recommendations based on the movie ratings you tell it.

Both my curriculum vitae and a research statement are available for download. Last updated: 5 June 2006.

In my past I have done crazy things like: play bass guitar in the 'dance-pop quartet' called The Traces, studied long form improv comedy at the Brave New Institute, and gone away to internships at such places as Microsoft and UIR at (the formally Xerox) PARC.

Here is a listing of my research publications. For more papers about recommender systems, please see the GroupLens publications webpage.

Dissertation

Refereed Full Papers

• S.M. McNee, N. Kapoor, and J.A. Konstan. "Don't Look Stupid: Avoiding Pitfalls when Recommending Research Papers". In Proceedings of the 2006 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2006), Banff, Canada, November 2006, pp. 171-180. [Download PDF]
• C-N. Ziegler, S.M. McNee, J.A. Konstan, and G. Lausen. "Improving Recommendation Lists Through Topic Diversification". In Proceedings of the Fourteenth International World Wide Web Conference (WWW 2005), Chiba, Japan, May 2005, pp. 22-32. [DOI] [Download PDF]
• R. Torres, S.M. McNee, M. Abel, J.A. Konstan, and J. Riedl. "Enhancing Digital Libraries with TechLens+". In Proceedings of the Fourth ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL 2004), Tuscon AZ, June 2004, pp. 228-237. [DOI] [Download PDF]
• S.M. McNee, S.K. Lam, C. Guetzlaff, J.A. Konstan, and J. Riedl. "Confidence Displays and Training in Recommender Systems". In Proceedings of INTERACT '03 IFIP TC13 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, Zurich, Switzerland, September 2003, pp. 176-183. [Download PDF]
• S.M. McNee, S.K. Lam, J.A. Konstan, and J. Riedl. "Interfaces for Eliciting New User Preferences in Recommender Systems". In Proceedings ofThe 9th International Conference on User Modeling (UM'2003), LNAI 2702, Johnstown PA, June 2003, pp. 178-188. [OpenURL] [Download PDF]
  This paper received the Best Student Paper Award from UM 2003.
• S.M. McNee, I. Albert, D. Cosley, P. Gopalkrishnan, S.K. Lam, A.M. Rashid, J.A. Konstan, and J. Riedl. "On the Recommendation of Citations for Research Papers". CHI Letters 4(3), In Proceedings of CSCW 2002, ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, New Orleans LA, November 2002, pp. 116-125. [DOI] [Download PDF]
• A.M. Rashid, I. Albert, D. Cosley, S.K. Lam, S.M. McNee, J.A. Konstan, and J. Riedl. "Getting to Know You: Learning New User Preferences in Recommender Systems". In Proceedings of The 2002 International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI 2002), San Francisco CA, January 2002, pp. 127-134. [DOI] [Download PDF]

Short Papers, Demos, and other Publications

• J.A. Konstan, S.M. McNee, C.N. Ziegler, R. Torres, N. Kapoor, and J. Riedl. "Lessons on Applying Automated Recommender Systems to Information Seeking Tasks". A Nectar paper in the Proceedings of AAAI-06: the Twenty-First National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-06), Boston MA, July 2006. [Download PDF]
• S.M. McNee, J. Riedl, and J.A. Konstan. "Making Recommendations Better: An Analytic Model for Human-Recommender Interaction". A Work-In-Progress paper in the Extended Abstracts of the 2006 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2006), Montreal, Canada, April 2006, pp. 1003-1008. [DOI] [Download PDF]
  A poster version of this paper won Best Poster at the 2006 CSGSA Poster Conference.
• S.M. McNee, J. Riedl, and J.A. Konstan. "Being Accurate is Not Enough: How Accuracy Metrics have hurt Recommender Systems". A Work-In-Progress paper in the Extended Abstracts of the 2006 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2006), Montreal, Canada, April 2006, pp. 997-1001. [DOI] [Download PDF]
• J.A. Konstan, N. Kapoor, S.M. McNee, and J.T. Butler. "TechLens: Exploring the Use of Recommenders to Support Users of Digital Libraries". A Project Briefing at the Coalition for Networked Information Fall 2005 Task Force Meeting, Phoenix AZ, December 2005. [Link to CNI]
• S.M. McNee, I. Albert, D. Cosley, P. Gopalkrishnan, S.K. Lam, A.M. Rashid, J.A. Konstan, and J. Riedl. "TechLens: A Recommender for Computer Science Research Papers". A Demonstration in Conference Supplement of CSCW 2002, ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work), New Orleans LA, November 2002, pp. 115-118. [Try the TechLens Demo Yourself!]