Dan Ashbrook

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I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Sciences and Technologies and the Department of Computer Science of the Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York.My research is in the area of human-computer interaction, where I concentrate on new interaction techniques, devices, and applications. Historically I have concentrated on wearable and mobile computing, with the goal of allowing people to be less focused on their technology and more engaged with the world, while still reaping the creativity and productivity benefits of their devices. My current research continues this thread while adding a second focus on helping non-experts more easily understand and use personal fabrication technology such as 3D printers, laser cutters, and CNC routers.

More information can be found on my website at http://fetlab.rit.edu/dan.

Jennifer Mankoff

Research | Students | Teaching | Bio | CV | Advice | Fun | Contact

Research

My work is focused on giving people with disabilities the voice, tools and agency to advocate for themselves. I take a multifaceted approach that includes machine learning, 3D printing, and tool building. At a high level, my goal is to tackle the technical challenges necessary for everyday individuals and communities to solve real-world problems (see all the Make4all projects).

Some of my writing about my disability experience and my Lyme blog

Some of my most recent projects (All):

Students

Current PhD students:

Former PhD Students:

Also those with no make4all page: Mark Baldwin (co-advised with Gillian Hayes); Christian Koehler; Sunyoung Kim; Scott Carter; Tara Matthews; Julia Schwarz 

I love to work with undergraduate and masters students and have mentored more than I can count. My mentorship always tries to include career advice as well as project advice, whether students are going on to research or not. Many undergraduate students I advised have gone on to careers in research, however, including some current faculty (Julie Kientz, Gary Hsieh, Ruth Wylie). There are at least 50 other students who are alumni of my group who are not currently listed on this page but who all made important contributions to my work over the years. Some current mentees:

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Recent Alumni I mentored/advised:

Additional alumni can be found on the People page.

Teaching

I love to teach, and have put significant time into curriculum development over the years.

CLASSES DEVELOPED FOR AND TAUGHT AT CMU
  • I am currently developing a new course on data centric computing, called The Data Pipeline. The course is accessible to novice programmers and includes a series of tutorials that can support independent online learning.
  • I helped to redesign the HCI Masters course User Centered Research and Evaluation, specifically bringing a real world focus to our skills teaching around contextual inquiry
  • I developed an online course specifically for folks who want to know enough program to be able to prototype simple interfaces (targeted at our incoming masters students). The course is available free online at CMU’s Open Learning Initiative under “Media Programming”
  • I developed and taught the Environment and Society course over the last five years. This was a project oriented course that took a very multifaceted look at the role of technology in solving environmental problems.
  • I helped to develop a reading course that is required for our PhD students to ensure that they have depth in technical HCI: CS Mini
  • Assistive Technology: I developed and taught one of the first Assistive Technology courses in the country (specifically from an HCI perspective), and I used a service learning model to do so. Original class
  • I have helped to revamp Process and Theory over the years, a skills course intended for our first year PhD students.

Bio

My Bachelor’s of Arts was done at Oberlin College, where I was a member of two great societies — FOO and ACM. I received my Ph.D. as a member of the Future Computing Environments research group in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech , Gregory Abowd and Scott Hudson were my advisors. I then spent three formative years at UC Berkeley as an Assistant Professor working with the I/O group and 12 years at CMU before joining the faculty of the University of Washington. This is my “Academic genealogy” on the Abowd side. I am also disabled, with an invisible chronic illness, and I am happy to talk about my experience of navigating both medical and social barriers in academia and provide mentorship. Please reach out if I can help. 

Bio:  Jennifer Mankoff is the Richard E. Ladner Professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. Her research is focused on accessibility through giving people the voice, tools and agency to advocate for themselves.  She strives to bring both structural and personal perspectives to her work. For example, her recent work in fabrication of accessible technologies considers not only innovative tools that can enable individual makers but also the larger clinical and sociological challenges to disseminating and sharing designs. Jennifer received her PhD at Georgia Tech, advised by Gregory Abowd and Scott Hudson, and her B.A. from Oberlin College.

Her previous faculty positions include UC Berkeley’s EECS department and Carnegie Mellon’s HCI Institute. Jennifer is a CHI Academy member and has been recognized with a SIGCHI Social Impact Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship and IBM Faculty Fellowship, and an ASSETS 10 year impact award.

Other Thoughts and Links

  • Advice about searching through literature, doing reviews, etc.
  • Please email me if you need information or help regarding RSI (or are experiencing any computer-related pain).
  • I have chronic lyme disease. Lyme disease is the most common vector born disease in America today. I write about my experiences on A Lyme Disease Journal
  • Best Conference Experience Ever: The CHI Straggles Seder

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Contact Information

Jennifer Mankoff
jmankoff [at] acm.org
206-685-3035
Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering
University of Washington
Paul G. Allen Center
185 Stevens Way
Campus Box 352350
Seattle, WA 98195

Scott Hudson

Scott Hudson is a Professor in theHuman-Computer Interaction Institutewithin the School of Computer Science atCarnegie Mellon University where he serves as the founding director of the HCII PhD program. He was previously an Associate Professor in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology and prior to that an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at theUniversity of Arizona. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Colorado in 1986.

Elected to the CHI Academy in 2006, he has published over 150 technical papers. He has regularly served on program committees for the SIGCHIand UIST conferences, served as papers co-chair for CHI ’09, and again for CHI ’10. He has previously served as Program Chair for UIST ’90 and UIST ’00, as well as Symposium Chair for UIST ’93 and the founding UIST Doctoral Symposium chair from 2003 to 2005. He also served as a founding Associate Editor for ACM Transactions on Computer Human Interaction. His recent research funding has been from the National Science Foundation, Microsoft, and Disney Research.

Research

Some recent projects (see more)

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You can find out more about Scott’s research here and teaching here.

Jon Schull

Research Scientist, RIT MAGIC Center  (http://rit.academia.edu/JonSchull)

Jon Schull helped to found E-Nable (http://enablingthefuture.org) As described in this MSNBC article, he is known for “building a community of volunteers who design, create and donate prosthetic hands made with 3-D printers; and for creating an online platform that connects those volunteers with individuals who need the hands. Schull is a research scientist at Rochester Institute of Technology’s Center for Media, Arts, Games, Interaction and Creativity – also known as the MAGIC Center – and the founder of e-Nable and president of the e-Nabling The Future Foundation.”

 

Jodi Forlizzi

Jodi Forlizzi is a Professor of Human-Computer Interaction in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University and a co-founder of Pratter.us, a healthcare startup. Her research ranges from understanding the limits of human attention to understanding how products and services evoke social behavior. She designs and researches systems ranging from peripheral displays to social and assistive robots. Her current research interests include designing educational games that are engaging and effective, designing services that adapt to people’s needs, and designing for healthcare. Jodi is a member of the ACM CHI Academy and has been honored by the Walter Reed Army Medical Center for excellence in HRI design research. Jodi has consulted with Disney and General Motors to create innovative product-service systems.

http://jodiforlizzi.com/

Burak Kara

Professor Kara’s research develops new computational techniques and software to support product design and user interaction with design tools. His research interests include CAD/CAE, product design and styling, geometric modeling, shape analysis, design for additive manufacturing, user interfaces for design, pen computing and artificial intelligence. While founded in mechanical engineering, his research draws upon several related disciplines including computer graphics, machine learning and human-computer interaction.

One of Professor Kara’s recent research projects involves developing a sketch-based 3D geometric modeling tool. This work aims to help designers construct, modify, and fluidly interact with 3D geometry through a 2D sketch-based interface. The techniques enable a rapid creation and manipulation of 3D shapes, and are particularly effective for concept development and styling design. Other ongoing projects include shape abstraction, study of aesthetic product forms, design for additive manufacturing, free-form surface feature modeling, data-driven shape design and engineering design and analysis from image-based representations.

Example: Semantic Shape Editing

 

http://vdel.me.cmu.edu

Stelian Coros

I am an Assistant Professor in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. I received my PhD in Computer Science from theUniversity of British Columbia. My doctoral dissertation was awarded the Alain Fournier Ph.D. Dissertation Annual Award. Prior to joining CMU’s faculty, I was a Research Scientist working in the Disney Research Zurich lab. I am interested in a variety of research topics that include control strategies for virtual actors and robots, motion planning algorithms, physics-based modeling and simulation, computational design and digital fabrication. For my work in these areas, I was the recipient of an Intel Early Career Faculty Award. TedXZurich and Robotics Institute Seminar talks I gave are available online.

I am looking for motivated students and postdocs with strong mathematical backgrounds and a passion for computer graphics and/or robotics.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~scoros/

Jeff Bigham

jbighamMy research spans HCI, accessibility, crowdsourcing, human computation, artificial intelligence, social computing, computer vision, machine learning, and language technologies.

Currently, I am focused on four broad projects:

  • Transitioning crowd-powered systems to automation. I’m working on integrating speech and language technology into Chorus; automatic speech recognition into Scribe; and, automatic computer vision into VizWiz and Zensors.
  • Creating a more accessible Web with WebAnywhere, and by crowdsourcing accessibility improvements to existing web content.
  • Working to understand dyslexia using human-computer interaction measures, creating tools that help people with dyslexia read and write better, and eventually building tools to diagnose dyslexia earlier and easier.
  • Creating a brighter future for crowd workers through education and training. I’m working to design tasks that leverage the expertise that crowd workers already have, and tasks that allow workers to build useful skills while they work.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jbigham/

Bob Kraut

bob-demin-4-crop_0Robert E. Kraut
Herbert A. Simon Professor of Human-Computer Interaction
Human-Computer Interaction Institute, School of Computer Science
Tepper School of Business
Center for the Future of Work, Heinz College
Carnegie Mellon University
Ph.D., Social Psychology, Yale University, 1973

Dr. Kraut has broad interests in the design and social impact of computing and has conducted empirical research on online communities, the social impact of the internet on personal relationships and psychological well-being, the design of information technology for small-group intellectual work, the communication needs of collaborating scientists, the impact of business computer technologies on organizational networks employment quality and home-based employment. He is a fellow of both the Association for Psychological Science and the Association of Computing Machinery.

His recent research has focused on the analysis and design of online communities, such as health-support communities, Facebook groups, guilds in multi-player games, and Wikipedia project. This research consists of both empirical analyses of how they operate, such as how they socialize newcomers and they coordinate their work, and interventions to improve their operation. He is the coauthor of Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-Based Social Design, a handbook published by MIT Press.

He wrote a biographical essay, Re-engineering social encounters, in 2003 for the American Psychological Association. In 1980, his research on the evolution of the human facial expressions won a Proxmire Golden Fleece award. His biographical essay, Why bowlers smile, and Ed Diener’s essay, Why Robert Kraut smiles, describe the legacy of that award. CMU’s School of Computer Science alumni magazine recently published an article describing his role in the formation of the Human-Computer Interaction Institute.

http://kraut.hciresearch.org/

Jon Pearlman

Jon Pearlman, PhD is HERL’s Associate Director of Engineering and assistant professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Science & Technology at the University of Pittsburgh.  Dr. Pearlman earned his BS and MS in mechanical engineering at the UC Berkeley and Cornell University, respectively.  Dr. Pearlman completed his PhD work Rehabilitation Science and Technology at the University of Pittsburgh in 2007, with an emphasis on assistive technology design and transfer to developing countries.  Dr. Pearlman’s research interests are in the areas of participatory action design, assistive technology transfer methods, and new product development.

http://www.herl.pitt.edu/person/jon-pearlman