Newsletter July 2009 In this issue: Editorial | Events | Spotlights | News | Conferences | Funding | Groups | Jobs EDITORIAL Greetings! I hope you are all having a wonderful summer. In the July issue of the CTSB newsletter, our faculty spotlight is Professor and CTSB affiliate Helen Schwartzman (Anthropology). Our featured student is Ph.D. graduate student Daniel Slaten (Psychology) and the project spotlight is Brainstorm Bounce by Elizabeth Gerber (Mechanical Engineering), Patti Bao (TSB), and David Hoffman (Learning & Organizational Change). I hope you all will continue to join us throughout the summer at our TCIF lunches. Thank you for reading this issue and we look forward to seeing you! - Christopher Riesbeck (Acting Director, CTSB) and Lindsey Lumley (Newsletter Editor, CTSB) EVENTS Upcoming CTSB events to mark in your calendar: Thank CTSB It's Friday! The July TCIF event will be held on Friday, July 10, 2009 in Frances Searle, room 2-431. Please join us for lunch and engaging conversation. If you have specific ideas of activities you would like to see or showcase at TCIF this summer or next fall quarter, please contact Lindsey Lumley at l-lumley@northwestern.edu. SPOTLIGHTS Faculty Spotlight: Helen Schwartzman Helen Schwartzman is a psychological anthropologist who specializes in the study of childhood development and play and the anthropology of work and organizations. As an Americanist she is drawn to the study of everyday activities that have been neglected by researchers and taken for granted by participants. This has led to studies examining how children construct play worlds for themselves, the role of meetings in organizations and communities, storytelling in work settings, and, most recently, moral panics about the introduction of new media (specifically the internet) to children in the United States. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in anthropology from Northwestern (1973) and her B.A. in anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley (1967). Her publications include Transformations: The Anthropology of Children's Play (University of Chicago Folklore Prize, Second Prize), The Meeting: Gatherings in Organizations and Communities, Ethnography in Organizations (now in its 6th printing), and Children and Anthropology: Perspectives for the 21st Century. She has served as Chair of the Department of Anthropology (2000-2003) and is currently the Director of Undergraduate Studies. Helen Schwartzman is the recipient of grants/fellowships from the Spencer Foundation, National Research Council, Ford Foundation, National Institute for Mental Health (Institutional Training Grant), NU Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research and the Illinois Department of Mental Health. She has served as Editor of the Special Publications-Professional Series of the American Anthropological Association, Deputy Editor for Anthropology for the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography and as a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Play and Culture. She is currently on the Editorial Board for the journal Culture and Organizations. Her most recent project is a "reflection" on the ways that anthropologists use the imagery of "the mirror" to portray the goals of the discipline as well as to theorize about specific aspects of society and culture. Her first presentation of material from this project "The Meeting in the Mirror" was recently given as discussant's comments for the session "Work Meetings as Constitutive Organizational Phenomena" at the Annual Meeting of the International Communication Association in Chicago, May 2009. Student Spotlight: Daniel Slaten Hailing from Kansas City, Missouri, Daniel Slaten is a Ph.D. student in the Cognitive Psychology program. He works with both Dr. William Horton and Dr. David Rapp. His research focuses on the intersection of language and cognition with two primary areas of interest, narrative comprehension and common ground (information shared between speakers). His research on narratives has probed how readers mentally represent stories and how these representations are influenced by general world knowledge and emotional preferences. In his research on common ground, he has examined how basic memory processes influence access to common ground information during online language processing, as revealed by eye-movements. Future research projects will center on how different social factors influence conversational common ground. When not dutifully working in the lab, Daniel enjoys playing the guitar badly, reading, playing the occasional videogame, watching and playing soccer (favorite team: Liverpool) and writing. He received his Bachelors Degree in Psychology from the University of Arkansas in 2006. Research Spotlight: Brainstorm Bounce Despite mixed evidence for its effectiveness, group brainstorming remains a widely used and well-perceived phenomenon. While much research has focused on reducing process loss during the brainstorm, Dr. Liz Gerber (Mechanical Engineering), PhD student Patti Bao (Technology & Social Behavior), and recent alum David Hoffman (Learning & Organizational Change) have been investigating a tool to support creativity in the days prior to a brainstorm. Before they meet, group members receive periodic prompts related to a brainstorm topic and are encouraged to respond with text or photo snippets of their everyday experiences. These responses are then unveiled and visualized at the start of the brainstorm. Automatically generated prompts, online visualizations, and multimedia messaging support are still in the works. To try out an early version of the tool, please visit www.brainstormbounce.com. Faculty & Student News Roundup Ian Horswill (EECS) won the Best Teacher award at the Annual EECS Awards Presentation on June 5th. Ed Colgate (Mechanical Engineering), Keehoon Kim, Julio J. Santos-Munne, Alex Makhlin, and Michael A. Peshkin co-authored "On the Design of Miniature Haptic Devices for Upper Extremity Prosthetics," which was published in the current issue of the IEEE-ASME Transactions on Mechatronics journal. Darren Gergle (Communication) was one of two Northwestern faculty members awarded the 2008/2009 Clarence Ver Steeg Faculty Award for excellence in graduate research advising. TSB graduate student Sheena Lewis was one of 20 students from around the globe awarded a Google Anita Borg Scholarship, which honors women scholars in technology who have demonstrated academic success, leadership, and service. Eszter Hargittai (Communication) and Josh Pasek co-authored "Facebook and academic performance: Reconciling a media sensation with data," based on their research which refuted the findings of an earlier study that showed a negative relationship between the use of the online networking site Facebook and students' academic achievement. Their paper was published in the online peer-reviewed journal, First Monday, in May. Funding Opportunities Note: the following list is not exhaustive. You can help by alerting us to relevant opportunities. NSF Science of Learning Centers The Science of Learning Centers program (SLC) offers awards for large-scale, long-term Centers that create the intellectual, organizational and physical infrastructure needed for the long-term advancement of Science of Learning research. It supports research that harnesses and integrates knowledge across multiple disciplines to create a common groundwork of conceptualization, experimentation and explanation that anchor new lines of thinking and inquiry towards a deeper understanding of learning. The goals of the Science of Learning Centers Program are to advance the frontiers of all the sciences of learning through integrated research; to connect the research to specific scientific, technological, educational, and workforce challenges; to enable research communities to capitalize on new opportunities and discoveries; and to respond to new challenges. The SLC Program construes learning broadly, including that of animals, humans and machines. The program is open to many possible approaches and topics that can be brought to examine what learning is, how it is affected, how it works at different levels, how biologically-derived learning principles can inform artificial systems and vice versa. The Program places high value on creativity, integration of theoretical and empirical work, innovative models of research and research transfer, and inventive uses of technology. Proposals due August 3, 2009 and annually thereafter. Organization for Autism Research The Organization for Autism Research (OAR) seeks applied research proposals for its 2010 Autism Applied Research Competition. Through this competition, OAR intends to promote evidence based practices delivered from research in the following areas: the analysis, evaluation, or comparison of current models of assessment, intervention, or systems of service delivery including policy analysis; applied aspects of educational, behavioral, or social/communicative intervention across the lifespan; adult issues such as continuing education, employment, residential supports, sexuality instruction, quality-of-life determinants, and "later intervention"; and issues related to family support, social and community integration, assessment and intervention with challenging behavior, and the use of technology in support of learners with ASD. OAR seeks to fund studies of one to two years in length that will likely produce practical and clearly objective results that promise some direct benefit for learners with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), their families, and related service providers (e.g., teachers, classroom aides, job coaches, speech pathologists, psychologists, etc.) at different times in their lives. Proposal deadline is April 2, 2010. ACM-W Scholarships for Attendance at Research Conferences ACM-W provides support for women students in Computer Science and related programs (at the undergraduate or graduate levels) who wish to attend research conferences. Exposure to the CS research world can be an important factor in encouraging a student to continue on to the next level (undergraduate to graduate, Masters to Ph.D., Ph.D. to an industry or academic position). The student does not have to present a paper at the conference she attends. In cases of exceptional demonstrable interest in pursuing study and research in CS, high school students will also be considered for conference support. Twenty such scholarships, of up to $500 each, will be awarded annually. ACM-W also encourages the student's home department to match the scholarship award and recognize the student's achievement locally within their department. In addition, if the award is for attendance at one of several ACM special interest group conferences (SIGCSE, SIGARCH, SIGSOFT, SIGCOMM, SIGECOM, SIGGRAPH, SIGPLAN, and SIGOPS) the SIG will provide complementary conference registration and a mentor at the conference. Please visit http://women.acm.org/scholarships.html for more information and for application deadlines. CTSB Exploration Grants We encourage faculty and graduate students to collaborate across departments on projects that might potentially lead to larger grant proposals. We are interested in supporting the hire of undergraduates as a part of these collaborative teams. Please contact Chris Riesbeck c-riesbeck@northwestern.edu for further details. Conference Submission Deadlines 2nd International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling in Guimaraes, Portugal. Papers due July 6, 2009. IEEE ASRU2009 Automatic Speech Recognition and Understanding Workshop in Merano, Italy. Submissions due July 15, 2009. TSA'09 CIKM'09 Workshop on Topic-Sentiment Analysis in Hong Kong, Hong Kong. Papers due July 20, 2009. Communication in Autism: An HCSNet Workshop in Sydney, Australia. Submissions due July 24, 2009. eaSDS09 First Europe-Asia Spoken Dialogue Systems Technology Workshop in Kloster Irsee, Germany. Papers due July 30, 2009. CHI 2010 Computer Human Interaction conference in Atlanta, GA (April 10-15, 2010). Submissions due September 17, 2009. Speech Prosody 2010 Speech Prosody, 5th International Conference in Chicago, IL (May 11-14, 2010). Papers due October 15, 2009. Upcoming Conferences and Workshops IAFL International Association of Forensic Linguists conference in Amsterdam, Netherlands (July 6-9, 2009). MULTIMOD 2009 Multimodality of Communication in Children in Toulouse, France (July 9-11, 20009). WNSCI 2009 The 13th World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics in Orlando, FL (July 10-13, 2009). CCCT 2009 7th International Conference on Computing, Communications and Control Technologies in Orlando, FL (July 10-13, 2009). KGCM 2009 3rd International Conference on Knowledge Generation, Communication and Management in Orlando, FL (July 10-13, 2009). Workshop on Intelligent Systems for Assisted Cognition in Pasadena, CA (July 12, 2009). CIAM 2009 IJCAI-09 Workshop on Cross-Media Information Access and Mining in Pasadena, CA (July 13, 2009). "From Social Butterfly to Urban Citizen" A HCSNet Workshop on Social and Mobile Technology to Support Civic Engagement in Brisbane, Australia (July 13-14, 2009). HCSNet Hands-on Workshop on Mashups for Human Communication Science in Sydney Australia (July 27-28, 2009). Reading Groups If you would like to advertise a reading group, write ctsb@northwestern.edu to let us know. Employment Opportunities If you would like to advertise job openings within your research group or lab, please e-mail l-lumley@northwestern.edu, providing a brief description of the position(s) available, and any skills / experience required. You can sign-up, manage the way you receive the CTSB newsletter, or forward the current newsletter to a colleague, via the CTSB newsletter management page at http://ctsb.northwestern.edu/newsletter/manage/newsmanage.php CENTER FOR TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIAL BEHAVIOR Northwestern University | Frances Searle Building, #2-431 | 2240 Campus Drive | Evanston, IL 60208 | USA http://ctsb.northwestern.edu