CS&E Profile: Loren Terveen

Human-computer interaction, Computer-supported cooperative work, Computer-mediated communication, Recommender systems.

Ph.D. 1991, M.S. 1988, Computer Sciences, University of Texas at Austin

B.A. 1984, Computer Science, Mathematics, and History, University of South Dakota

About

Professor Loren Terveen specializes in human-computer interaction and computer-mediated communication. His academic record includes about 50 refereed journal and conference papers, one book, four book chapters, nine U.S. Patents, in addition to numerous other publications.

Terveen also has been active in professional service. He is a member of ACM and ACM/SIGCHI. He has served on the editorial board for ACM Transactions on CHI and Knowledge-Based Systems. He has led the major conferences in his field, including serving as general co-chair for CHI 2002 and IUI 1998 as well as program co-chair for CSCW 2004. Other professional service includes membership on the SIGCHI Publications Board and Conference Management Committee, 2002-2004, and the ACM Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence Conference Chair (1995-1999). Terveen also has served on numerous National Science Foundations Panels.

Research

My research interests are human-computer interaction and computer-mediated communication. I have done research in specific areas such as collaborative filtering, web search and information management, intelligent interfaces, organizational memory, and visualization.

There's one problem I'm most interested in - using technology to help people create and develop strong social ties. I want to help people form communities based on shared interests. And I want to help members of local and institutional communities develop stronger connections.

To pursue this goal, I'm guided by two research themes.

· Combining information and social spaces. I want to create online spaces where users interact with information (content) and other people - a simple example might be a music environment where people can both listen to music and find and interact with other people with similar tastes in music. I'm also interested in techniques for extracting information from records of people's online social activity - for example, extracting recommendations of web pages from Usenet messages.

· Combining physical and virtual interaction. I'm convinced that building strong social connections requires face-to-face, in-person interaction, that electronic communication alone just won't do the job. So I'm interested in ways to use electronic communication to enhance and strengthen existing communities whose members already have some face-to-face contact. I'm also interested in the use of mobile and location-aware devices that can integrate interaction in physical and virtual space.