News

The ACM Publications Board has approved the launch of the new Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems (TiiS), whose goal is to encourage and disseminate research that combines methods and ideas from artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction. TiiS will begin processing submissions in early 2010. Further information is available in the following document: ACM TiiS Preliminary Call for Papers (PDF, 1 page)

We had a great time at WikiSym last month. Our students Aaron Halfaker and Michael Ekstrand were both presenting work they had first-authored -- both of which had been nominated for Best Paper. Michael ended up winning for our paper "rv you're dumb: Identifying Discarded Work in Wiki Article History".

The ACM just announced their new Fellows --- and included me on the list!

We've begun work on a new project on Online Volunteer Communities. The idea is to help people through their lifecycle as contributors to online resources like Wikipedia.

Research Interests

My research focus is on collaborative systems that support human interaction through computer systems. My career goal is to understand how to develop and apply computer technology to the problems of human organizations.

One of the biggest such problems is getting the right information to the right people. The Internet has democratized the publishing process. Now, anyone who wants can publish anything they want, just by creating a Web site. We humans are hopelessly overmatched by the increasing volumes of information that are published. Collaborative filtering is a technology that enables us to all work together to sift through the millions of documents on any topic to find those that are most appropriate for each of us. Collaborative filtering works by learning which kinds of documents each of us likes, and finding other people who share out interests.

Across our entire research program, our goal is to understand how computers can be used to help people process information more efficiently, and work together better.

I am currently involved in several research projects to explore these topics.