CS&E Profile: Joseph Konstan

Human-computer interaction, recommender systems, multimedia systems, information visualization, internet applications and interfaces.

Ph.D. 1993, M.S. 1990, Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley

A.B. 1987, Computer Science, Harvard College

About

Professor Konstan specializes in human-computer interaction. He currently holds six United States Patents and has published more than 70 peer-reviewed papers and articles. He also co-authored a book with Prof. John Riedl.

Konstan was recently named to the inaugural class of ACM Distinguished Scientists (in 2006), and has also served as an IEEE Distinguished Visitor and an ACM Distinguished Lecturer among other honors.  He is a successful researcher who has led or participated in 20 federally-funded grants, including an NSF CAREER Grant Awards and an NSF ITR award (he is PI of six NSF grants). He and his students have been awarded numerous awards for research papers. He is also a dedicated and accomplished teacher who created the department's curriculum in human-computer interaction. He also introduced laboratory-based instruction to our lower-division undergraduate courses and created and teaches an overview course on computer science for non-engineers.

Prof. Konstan is active in service both within the University and within the profession. He recently finished serving as President of ACM SIGCHI, and currently serves as the Chair of ACM's SIG Governing Board as well as on ACM's Executive Committee and the ACM Council. He serves as the University of Minnesota's faculty representative to the Federal Demonstration Partnership, and just completed a two year term as vice-chair of the FDP. He is also a member of the University Senate and its Finance and Planning Committee.

Research

Prof. Konstan is interested in a wide range of topics under the general category of Human-Computer Interaction. His current work is mostly concerned with three areas:

• Recommender Systems -- systems that provide personal recommendations based on a community of users' experiences. The GroupLens Research Project developed the technology for automated collaborative filtering (a type of recommender algorithm) and currently is applying the technique to content ranging from movies to research articles in a digital library.
• Online Community -- studying why people choose to contribute to online communities and how to design communities to better foster participation of their members.  Specific efforts include experiments with incentives to see how users respond and interdisciplinary (and multi-university work) to bring together psychology and economics to better inform interface design for online communities.
• Computer Systems for HIV Prevention -- Prof. Konstan has been working for over five years with HIV Prevention researchers to assess the differential risks undertaken by men seeking sex with other men through online venues, and developing (and soon testing) an online intervention designed to reduce sexual risk-taking and sexually-transmitted infections.