Newsletter

September 2008

In this issue:

EDITORIAL

Welcome once again to the Center for Technology & Social Behavior (CTSB) newsletter, and an extra special welcome to those of you joining us for the first time!

In this September issue, we welcome in the new academic year by turning the spotlight on the 2008-2009 Center for Technology and Social Behavior acting director Chris Riesbeck, incoming Ph.D. student Alan Clark, and new post-doctoral research fellow Yoram Kalman. We also reveal details of the 2008-2009 CTSB colloquium series, and feature information about our first Friday event, Thank CTSB It's Friday.

As always, we hope that you find the newsletter a useful resource for information about other CTSB affiliates, forthcoming conference and grant deadlines, as well as reading groups and other activities. If you would like to publicize any news, achievements or announcements in the newsletter, then please contact the new CTSB newsletter editor, Elisa Revello <e-revello [at] northwestern.edu>. She would also appreciate hearing about resources or employment opportunities for inclusion. If you would like to suggest activities or opportunities for the center to pursue, please contact acting director Chris Riesbeck <c-riesbeck [at] northwestern.edu>.

Until next month, enjoy the newsletter and the end of summer, and we hope to see you at one of the CTSB events.

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

EVENTS

Upcoming CTSB events to mark in your calendar:

Colloquium Series

We thank our special summer CTSB colloquium speaker Professor Cliff Nass of Stanford University who spoke to a packed house on the role of voice in human-computer relationships. Exact dates for the fabulous CTSB Colloquium Series for 08-09 are almost set, and the full program will be announced soon on the CTSB colloquium page. In the meantime we can give you the Fall line-up: the first speaker in the series will be Jonathan Grudin (Microsoft Research), who will be presenting his research on the design, adoption and use of group support technologies, on Thursday September 25th at 4pm (room TBC). October will welcome Gloria Mark (UC Irvine) whose work examines multi-tasking in the workplace, distributed work and technology use, and technology adoption. November's speaker is Michael Tannenhaus (Rochester) talking about the mechanisms underlying real-time spoken language and reading comprehension. Please visit the CTSB colloquium page for times and venue, and come along and join us for all of the popular CTSB talks!

Thank CTSB it's Friday!

You'll be relieved to hear that Thank CTSB It's Friday (TCIF) will continue into the new year! Please join us to say goodbye to summer with the usual interesting conversation over lunch (12-2pm) this Friday, September 5 in the CTSB meeting room (2-431, Frances Searle Building).

If you have specific ideas of activities you would like to see, please get in touch with Elisa Revello <e-revello [at] northwestern.edu>.

SPOTLIGHTS

Faculty Spotlight: Chris Riesbeck

Chris Riesbeck will be serving as acting director of CTSB for the 2008-2009 year while Justine Cassell is on sabbatical. He will be supported in this task by the able executive committee of Darren Gergle (Communication Studies and EECS) and Peter Miller (Communication Studies). Chris is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford in 1974, with a dissertation on natural language understanding.

His current research is concerned with making interactive learning scenarios as easy to write as textbook chapters, and practice-based critique-driven mastering of skills a scalable alternative to traditional one-shot assignments for a grade. Articles on this work can be found in the conference and workshop proceedings for Learning Sciences, ED-MEDIA, IUI and AAAI. Chris is a AAAI Fellow, an NCEER Scholar, and serves on the Advisory Board for the Searle Center for Teaching Excellence.

More details of Professor Riesbeck's pursuits research can be found on his webpage.

Student Spotlight: Alan Clark

Alan is a new Ph.D. student in the Media, Technology, and Society program working with Professor Darren Gergle. He completed his undergraduate degree in Communication Studies in 2006 with a focus on Rhetoric and Sociolinguistics. As a Senior Fellow at Hamilton College, he wrote a thesis synthesizing the divergent models and understandings of telepresence from several fields (philosophy, cognitive science, media studies, and the arts). After graduation, he worked as an event planner at a talent agency, as a researcher at a legal reform non-profit, and as an assistant editor at a public policy discussion website.

After finding that none of these jobs were as interesting as they might sound, Alan decided to pursue a graduate degree. He joined the CollaboLab this summer. Alan is primarily interested in human-computer interaction and collaboration in shared virtual spaces, and will be working with Professor Gergle on naturalistic eye-tracking studies. Alan, a transplant from Brooklyn, now lives in Andersonville with his fiancee and his pet hedgehog. In his spare time, he enjoys soccer, video games, and cooking.

Staff Spotlight: Yoram Kalman

Yoram Kalman is a post-doctoral fellow who joined the Center for Technology and Social Behavior this summer. Yoram was previously at The Center for Study of the Information Society (INFOSOC) at The University of Haifa in Israel, where he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on Online Silence. Previously Yoram took an MBA, following undergraduate studies in human genetics, and spent several years in industry where he served, amongst other positions, as Senior Vice President for Academics, at the Amsterdam-based Laureate Online Education.

Yoram's dissertation work focused on response latencies in e-mail and in other forms of text-based online communication, and explored the causes and consequences of unresponsiveness in e-mail. His work combines obtrusive and unobtrusive, quantitative and qualitative methodologies. During his post-doctoral research, Yoram intends to further examine the way impressions are formed in text-based online communication. He is especially interested in subtle cues used in online communication that are equivalent to nonverbal cues in face-to-face communication. He also hopes to continue his work on the role of time and of silence in online communication, at the individual and organizational level. Lastly, he plans to explore the way 'real world' events and processes affecting people, are reflected in their online writing. If you are interested in discussing any related topics and collaborations, Yoram would be more than happy to meet and talk. Yoram's academic homepage is www.kalmans.com.

Faculty News Roundup

Ken Forbus (EECS) and Dedre Gentner (Psychology) presented their views of Artificial Intelligence and Psychology trajectories at the 30th Anniversary Symposium of the Cognitive Science Society Conference (Washington, DC).

Steven Franconeri (Psychology) published "Objects on a Collision Path with the Observer Demand Attention" (with Linn and Emms) in Psychological Science.

Wendi Gardner (Psychology) published "Is it a game? Evidence for social influence in the virtual world" (with Paul Eastwick) in the journal Social Influence.

Carla Pugh (Robert H. Lurie Cancer Center), published "The changing face of surgical education: simulation as the new paradigm" in the Journal of Surgery Research (with Scott, Cendan, Minter, Dunnington, and Kozar).

Manijeh Razeghi (EECS) is presenting a talk entitled "High Performance QC Lasers: Latest Achievements and Future Trends" at the International Quantum Cascade Lasers School and Workshop (IQCLSW) at Monte Verita, Switzerland.

Funding Opportunities

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

The Howard Foundation - Fellowships in History and Philosophy - The Howard Foundation awards a limited number of fellowships each year for independent projects in fields selected on a six-year rotation of topics. Appproximately ten fellowships will be awarded for 2009-2010 in the fields of History and Philosophy. Stipends of $25,000 are awarded to support individuals working on specific research projects. The foundation are willing to grant awardees some flexibility in the year in which they actually use their fellowships. Potential applicants should check that they meet the foundation criteria online before applying. Deadline for submissions is November 10.

NEH/IMLS - Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants - This program by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is designed to encourage innovations in the digital humanities. By awarding relatively low-dollar grants to support the planning stages, NEH aims to encourage the development of projects that are particularly innovative and have the potential to make a positive impact on the humanities. In an effort to foster new collaborations and advance the role of cultural repositories in online teaching, learning, and research, this program is co-sponsored by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). NEH and IMLS encourage library and museum officials as well as scholars, scientists, educational institutions, and other non-profit organizations to apply for these grants and to collaborate when appropriate. Proposals should be for the planning or initial stages of digital initiatives in any area of the humanities. The deadline is October 8.

NSF - Research and Evaluation on Education in Science and Engineering (REESE) - This program supports basic and applied research and evaluation that enhance science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning and teaching. The Research and Evaluation on Education in Science and Engineering (REESE) program aims at advancing research at the frontiers of STEM learning, education, and evaluation, and at providing the foundational knowledge necessary to improve STEM teaching and learning at all educational levels and in all settings. This solicitation calls for three types of proposals--Knowledge Diffusion, Empirical Research, and Large Empirical Research. Letter of intent due October 9, full proposal due November 12.

NSF - Sustainable Digital Data Preservation and Access Network Partners (DataNet) - This solicitation addresses major challenges of this scientific generation: how to develop the new methods, management structures and technologies to manage the diversity, size, and complexity of current and future data sets and data streams. This solicitation addresses that challenge by creating a set of exemplar national and global data research infrastructure organizations (dubbed DataNet Partners) that provide unique opportunities to communities of researchers to advance science and/or engineering research and learning. The new types of organizations envisioned in this solicitation will integrate library and archival sciences, cyberinfrastructure, computer and information sciences, and domain science expertise to: provide reliable digital preservation, access, integration, and analysis capabilities for science and/or engineering data over a decades-long timeline; continuously anticipate and adapt to changes in technologies and in user needs and expectations; engage at the frontiers of computer and information science and cyberinfrastructure with research and development to drive the leading edge forward; and serve as component elements of an interoperable data preservation and access network. Deadline for preproposals is November 13, full proposals due May 15, 2009.

NSF - Science of Science and Innovation Policy - This solicitation aims to foster the development of the knowledge, theories, data, tools, and human capital needed to cultivate a new Science of Science and Innovation Policy (SciSIP). The SciSIP program underwrites fundamental research that creates new explanatory models, analytic tools and datasets designed to inform the nation’s public and private sectors about the processes through which investments in science and engineering (S&E) research are transformed into social and economic outcomes. SciSIP’s goals are to understand the contexts, structures and processes of S&E research, to evaluate reliably the tangible and intangible returns from investments in research and development (R&D), and to predict the likely returns from future R&D investments within tolerable margins of error and with attention to the full spectrum of potential consequences. Full proposals due December 16 (preproposals not required).

CTSB Exploration Grants

A further reminder about the CTSB "exploration grants" program. Any interdisciplinary project qualifies. In particular, we encourage faculty and graduate students to collaborate across departments on projects that might potentially lead to larger grant proposals. 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>.

Conference Submission Deadlines

ICCPOL 2009 Language Technology for the Knowledge-based Economy Hong Kong, Hong Kong (March 26-27, 2009). Submission deadline is September 19.

Mind-Context Divide 2009 Linguistic Interfaces & Language Acquisition Workshop Iowa City, Iowa (April 30-May 2, 2009). Submission deadline is October 1.

ECIR 2009 31st European Conference on Information Retrieval Toulouse, France (April 6-9, 2009). Submission deadline is October 5.

EACL 2009 12th Meeting of the European Chapter of the ACL Athens, Greece (March 30-April 3, 2009). Submission deadline is October 10.

Pragmatics 2009 11th International Pragmatics Association Conference Melbourne, Australia (July 12-17 2009). Submission deadlines: Papers October 15.

Reading Groups

If you would like to advertise a reading group, let Elisa <e-revello [at] northwestern.edu> know. 

Currently the Autism Reading Group meets on Fridays at 3pm in the CTSB (Frances Searle, room 2-431). This month's meetings will take place on September 5th and 19th. If you would like to join the group, please contact Elisa.

The Grounding Reading Group has taken a break over the summer - please contact Kino Aguilar <kino [at] northwestern.edu> for details of the next meeting.

Employment Opportunities

ArticuLab: Research Assistants We are seeking to fill several part-time paid positions for undergraduate research assistants to work on the NSF-funded project "Bridging the Achievement Gap with Virtual Peers". This is a great opportunity to be involved in an innovative research experience! You should have:

• Undergraduate coursework or research experience in Education, Psychology, Linguistics, African American Studies, Communication, or a related field
• Ability to demonstrate initiative and complete tasks independently
• Strong computer skills and/or media editing skills are a plus

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