Newsletter January 2008

In this issue:

WELCOME

Hello and welcome to the first issue of the Center for Technology & Social Behavior (CTSB) monthly newsletter (and the introduction of our new snazzy logo: power on!). Below you will find a guide to resources of potential interest, including upcoming grant and conference deadlines, local talks, and available center-internal resources such as systems administration, business administration, and equipment for loan.

In addition, we profile the activities of current CTSB members, and each month we will run a spotlight feature covering one of the CTSB-affiliated faculty members and one of the CTSB-affiliated graduate students. We hope this helps you - CTSB affiliates of all sorts - get to know each other better, and that it will inspire you to apply for one of the CTSB small exploration grants for collaborative research (more about these later).

Since this is the first issue, we thought we would take this opportunity to present an overview of our vision for the Center, and also highlight some of the CTSB activities that we have in store for you this Winter and Spring. Of course in future editions, we will remind you of events nearer the time.

One of the primary reasons for the Center, and also for this newsletter, is to promote dialogue between researchers from a variety of academic backgrounds. We therefore encourage you to get in touch with us: not only to share your news and achievements, but also to inform us of resources that would be useful to other CTSB members. Additionally, you may want to use the newsletter to request assistance or collaboration with other Center affiliates, or to announce job openings or other resources. The best way to do this is to contact the CTSB newsletter editor, Alastair Gill <alastair [at] northwestern.edu> directly.

We hope you enjoy reading our newsletter, and look forward to meeting you at one of the forthcoming CTSB events.

-- Justine Cassell (Director, CTSB) and Alastair Gill (Research Scientist, CTSB)

EDITORIAL

This being the first CTSB newsletter, we thought it appropriate to remind you of (inform you of) the CTSB mission statement:

The Center for Technology and Social Behavior supports interdisciplinary interactions among faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates with the goal of better understanding the relationship between technology and social behavior, including how humans respond to technology, how humans respond to one another in the context of technology, and how technology can be more responsive to humans. We see our goal as both understanding the role that technology plays in our everyday social interactions, and facilitating the development of the next generation of technologies that will support positive social ends. We believe that the study of technology can bring about a better understanding of human behavior, and that the study of human behavior will result in better technologies.

All Northwestern faculty and research scientists, graduate students and undergraduates are eligible to become CTSB affiliates, and CTSB affiliation makes you eligible for the use of equipment (such as eye trackers), gives you access to human resources (such as a business administrator, and dedicated programmer), and allows you to apply for CTSB Exploration grants (more below). So far, participating faculty come from almost every school at Northwestern, and more than a dozen different departments. Please swell the ranks with your presence. To find out more, contact Justine Cassell <justine [at] northwestern.edu>, Director.

EVENTS

CTSB is hosting a number of exciting events this year. More details forthcoming, but for the moment, mark your calendars with the following:

Colloquium Series

We are proud to announce the CTSB Colloquium Series for this year. Once again, we have an amazing line-up of internationally-renowned scholars. The theme for this year's colloquium series is "Social Technologies", and the series got off to a fine start in the first quarter with talks by Professors Ed Hutchins (Director of the Distributed Cognition and Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory at UCSD), Paul Dourish (Department of Informatics, UC Irvine) and Lyn Walker (Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield). The winter talks will take place in the ITW auditorium on the 2nd floor of the Ford Building. Steve Whittaker (University of Sheffield) kicks off the series in 2008 with his talk Digital Memories: Do We Need Them?

Each colloquium speaker is available for individual meetings with faculty and students. In addition, CTSB hosts a graduate student-only lunch. If you are interested in meeting with any of the following speakers, either singly or in a group, we suggest you contact us right away, as schedules fill up quickly. Please contact CTSB program assistant Elisa Revello <e-revello [at] northwestern.edu> with your request.

• Steve Whittaker (University of Sheffield) - Jan. 10 (4pm)
• Luis von Ahn (Carnegie Mellon) - Feb. 7 (4pm)
• Sara Kiesler (CMU) - Feb. 28 (12pm)
• Wendy Kellogg (IBM Research) - Mar. 27 (4pm)
• Roz Picard (MIT) - April 17 (4pm)

Thank CTSB it's Friday!

Starting January 11th 2008, wine and hors d'oeuvres will be served in the CTSB from 4pm to 6pm on the first Friday of every month. Mostly the gatherings will be purely social in nature, but it's also a great opportunity to present work in progress, to practice conference talks, or to assess interest for collaborative grant proposals. If you are interested in presenting, please contact Maître d'hôte Alastair Gill <alastair [at] northwestern.edu>. The first TCIF (Thank CTSB It's Friday) will provide a perfect opportunity to catch up with other Center members after the new year. Put it in your Treos/Blackberries/smartphones now - we can promise that the food, drink and company will be excellent!

Dates for this quarter are: January 11 (First Friday of Term), February 1, March 7, and April 4 from 4pm - 6pm in the CTSB.

SPOTLIGHTS

Faculty Spotlight: Darren Gergle

Darren Gergle is an Assistant Professor in the departments of Communication Studies and Electrical Engineering & Computer Science. Before coming to Northwestern he received his Ph.D. from the Human Computer Interaction Institute in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.

Broadly speaking, Gergle's research and teaching interests are in the fields of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), with a focus on developing and applying cognitive and social theories of communication to the design, development and evaluation of novel collaboration technologies.

Gergle's current research focuses on understanding how shared visual information, such as the various forms provided by video-mediated communication systems, affects the ability of pairs to successfully communicate. The work has led to the development of computational models that can be used in a variety of collaborative applications to automatically provide timely and relevant visual feedback. In addition to this work, he explores the impact of large-scale displays on group performance, interpersonal trust development in computer-mediated environments, and has recently begun work developing contextual models that aim to relieve interruptions in everyday computing environments. When he's not in the lab, he spends sunny days floating on the water and chilly days skating on it.

Student Spotlight: Andrea Tartaro

Andrea Tartaro is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Technology and Social Behavior joint Ph.D. program in Computer Science and Communication Studies at Northwestern University. Her advisor is Justine Cassell, and CTSB affiliates Darren Gergle and Joan Chiao are on her committee. Her research concerns the design, development, and evaluation of technology for children with disabilities. Specifically, in her dissertation, Andrea is creating interactive virtual agents, called "virtual peers," that scaffold children with autism as they learn about language and social interaction. In the future, she hopes to continue her research on technology for autism as well as technologies to empower children with other disabilities. She is available to mentor other students in the fine art of technology and social behavior research. Andrea has an M.S. in Computer Science from Northwestern University, an M.A. in Instructional Technology from Teachers College, Columbia University, and a B.A. in Computer Science from Brown University. After graduating from Brown, Andrea worked as a software engineer at Sun Microsystems before returning to graduate school.

Resources Spotlight: The Mobile Tracking Lab

The Mobile Tracking Lab is a new CTSB shared research facility that provides a suite of highly portable, mobile data collection tools to collect human activity data in unconstrained physical environments. The current centerpiece technology is a pair of ASL tetherless Mobile Eye Tracking units and a laptop machine for analysis. The facility is open to researchers across Northwestern University, and CTSB members are especially encouraged to make use of this excellent facility.

The Mobile Tracking Lab differs from existing facilities and services available both within and outside of Northwestern University. Instead of a stationary physical lab contained within the confines of a particular department or school, our facility functions as a loan shop that grants the use of mobile eye-tracking technology to researchers throughout the university. In addition we provide the necessary personnel to support users and maintain the equipment.

Further details, and a 'user request' form, can be found at the Mobile Tracking Lab website.

Faculty News Roundup

Daniel Diermeier (Kellogg) was awarded the Aspen Institute Faculty Pioneer Award which recognizes business-school faculty who teach, research, practice and otherwise advance the principles of socially responsible leadership.

Matt Goldrick's (Linguistics) article ('Phonotactic probability influences speech production') with Ph.D. student Meredith Larson is due to appear in Cognition.

Stefan Kaufmann's (Linguistics) article 'Computer assessment of interview data using Latent Semantic Analysis' has been accepted for publication in Behavior Research Methods.

Don Norman (EECS & Psychology) was recently covered by the New York Times regarding his recent book The Design of Future Things, in which he proposes an emerging organism called 'person+machine'. Professor Norman is also busy writing another book (tentatively entitled 'Why Things Don't Work') scheduled for publication in late 2008.

Jennifer Richeson's (Psychology) article entitled 'Negotiating Interracial Interactions: Costs, Consequences, and Possibilities' (with Nicole Shelton, Princeton University) appeared in December's Current Directions in Psychological Science.

Ying Wu EECS) presented two papers at the fall IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 'Game-Theoretic Multiple Target Tracking' and 'Random Partition for Common Visual Pattern Discovery'.

Funding Opportunities

Note: the following list is not exhaustive. You can help by alerting us to relevant opportunities.

NSF Science and Society (STS) The NSF Science and Society Program considers proposals at the intersections of engineering, science, technology, and society. The research areas are divided into four components: Ethics and Values in Science, Engineering and Technology (EVS); History and Philosophy of Science, Engineering and Technology (HPS); Social Studies of Science, Engineering and Technology (SSS); and Studies of Policy, Science, Engineering and Technology (SPS). Two upcoming closing dates for full proposals are February 1, and August 1, 2008.

NSF Human and Social Dynamics The Human and Social Dynamics (HSD) area fosters breakthroughs in understanding the dynamics of human action and development, as well as knowledge about organizational, cultural, and societal adaptation and change. The FY 2008 competition focuses on three emphasis areas (Agents of Change; Dynamics of Human Behavior; and Decision Making, Risk and Uncertainty). HSD encourages projects investigating complexity and systems thinking, with a goal of revealing the emergent properties of dynamic systems. HSD also encourages projects identifying human drivers of environmental change and exploring the consequences of environmental change on humans. Closing date for full proposals are February 19 (Type 1) and February 22, (Type 2).

NSF Theoretical Foundations (TF08) The Theoretical Foundations program supports basic research into the central issues underlying computer and information science and technology. Research and education projects sponsored by the program strengthen the intellectual foundations of algorithms and theoretical computer science, cryptography, network and communication theory, information theory, numeric and scientific computing, signal processing, and geometric algorithms, and bring advanced mathematical capabilities from these areas to bear on fundamental problems throughout science and engineering. The program encourages investigators to include in their proposals innovative curricula or educational materials to help advance the training of new experts in the cognate areas served by TF. Submission window for full proposals is March 12 - March 19.

NSF - Cyber Trust (CT) The NSF Cyber Trust (CT) program promotes a vision of a society where trust enables technologies to support individual and societal needs without violating confidences and exacerbating public risks. It is a vision of cyber space that is supportive of our basic principles of fairness and safe information access. The goal of the NSF CT program is to develop new insights and fundamental scientific principles that lead to software and hardware technologies on which people can justifiably rely. Full Proposal Deadline Date: March 24.

Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) The Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) solicits proposals for research through the general Broad Agency Announcement (BAA). AFOSR's aim is to foster and fund research within the Air Force Research Laboratory, universities, and industry laboratories to ensure the transition of research results to support US Air Force needs. The aim of this initiative is to use a carefully balanced research portfolio, to seek to create revolutionary scientific breakthrough, enabling the Air Force and U.S. industry to produce world class, militarily significant, and commercially valuable products. They invite proposals for research in many broad areas, including Aerospace and Materials Science, Physics and Electronics, Mathematics, Information and Life Sciences, and also Education and Outreach Programs. The program is ongoing and is available until replaced by a successor BAA program.

Conference Submission Deadlines

IDC 2008 Interaction Design for Children Computer-Human Interaction Conference Hosted at Northwestern by Justine Cassell (June 11-13, 2008). Workshop proposals are due January 7; full papers due January 21; posters, demos, and doctoral papers are due March 3.

CogSci 2008 The Cognitive Science Society Annual Meeting Washington, D.C. (July 23-26, 2008). Thirtieth Anniversary meeting with the theme The Development and Decline of Cognitive Function. Deadline for all submissions is February 1.

ST&D2008 Society for Text and Discourse Annual Meeting Memphis, Tennessee (July 12-15, 2008). Deadline for submissions is February 8.

COLING 2008 The 22nd International Conference on Computational Linguistics Manchester, England (August 18-22, 2008). Submission deadline for main conference is March 20.

INLG 2008 International Natural Language Generation Conference Salt Fork, Ohio (June 12-14, 2008). Paper and poster submissions are due March 21.

CTSB Exploration Grants

CTSB has just launched an "exploration grants" program. If you would like to collaborate with another CTSB-affiliated member from a department other than your own (faculty, research scientist or graduate student) on a project that might potentially lead to a larger grant proposal, then you are eligible to apply for these funds. We are particularly interested in supporting the hire of undergraduates as a part of these collaborative teams. If you are interested, please contact Justine Cassell <justine [at] northwestern.edu> to discuss possibilities.

Reading Groups

An autism reading group meets on Fridays at 1:30pm in the CTSB (Frances Searle, room 2-431). If you would like to join this group, please contact Alastair.

If you would like to advertise a reading group, let Alastair <alastair [at] northwestern.edu> know. 

Employment Opportunities

If you would like to advertise any kind of job openings within your research group or lab, then please contact Alastair Gill <alastair [at] northwestern.edu>, providing a brief description of the position(s) available, and any skills / experience required.