Welcome!
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is the region of intersection between the social and behavioral sciences, and information technology. It provides a challenging test domain for applying and developing social theory and a stringent source of constraint for creating and evaluating new information systems.
The CS department has created an outstanding faculty in human-computer interaction. A successful "research infrastructure" (RI) award from NSF in the mid-1990s allowed the construction of specialized laboratories for HCI research. The department's commitment to this endeavor was reflected in faculty hiring so that he HCI group now consists of eight core faculty and twelve other affiliated faculty, research scientists, emeritus faculty, or research faculty. Laboratory facilities for conducting HCI research are contained in the Center for Human-Computer Interaction located in Torgersen Hall and two shared laboratories located in McBryde Hall. The HCI group has found good synergy in the "gigapixel display" project that has received initial funding from NSF. The HCI group is also the point of contact between the department and the arts and humanities. The department is collaborating on a "cyberarts" program in conjunction with departments in the College of Architecture and the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences.
Recent news
REU Symposium July 16, 2009 (2009-07-20)
all of the summer REU students presented posters of their summer research projects in McBryde 106--the Undergraduate Learning Center. Click on More News for excerpts from proceedings.
More news...
Graduate Seminar
Date: 2009-07-17
Presenter: Sameer Ahuja (thesis defense)
Topic: Slurp!Abstract:
Local conversations online are an important means of building awareness and increasing participation amongst citizens. These conversations typically occur in local action groups and communities. These groups are centerpieces of local democratic activity and act as an intermediary level of organization between the individual and the government. Most local groups are restricted to using forums, listservs or collaborative blogs as the medium of conversation. In this presentation, I will discuss some of the problems with conventional local deliberation tools, and present the design of an open-source local conversation system we are developing at the Digital Government Research Lab that aims to utilize a set of social and organizational features for a more effective conversational environment.Bio:
Sameer is a second year Masters student in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech. He is working in projects under Dr. Manuel A. Perez-Quinones, Dr. Andrea Kavanaugh, and Dr. Steve Edwards. He is fascinated with how the nature of communities affect the design of software built around them and vice versa; and intrigued about the existence of common growth patterns across social applications. These days, he is building two research prototypes: A conversation system for local communities, and a social assignment repository for CS instructors that is built over Facebooks social graph (CATspace). In 2008, Sameer interned at Strands Labs, Seattle; where he co-designed and developed a community display for third places (http://cocollage.com). He is scheduled to join the Social Networking team at Microsoft when he graduates this summer. He would happily discuss his life outside of the grad school, but he draws a disturbing blank whenever he tries to think about it.
