Human-Centered Data Science Lab

SCC lab member and HCDE PhD student Daniel Perry has received two best paper awards at the Extreme Science and Engineering (XSEDE) 2013 Conference in San Diego. Perry received Best Student Paper and Best Training, Education, & Outreach Paper Awards for the paper, “Human Centered Game Design for Bioinformatics and Cyberinfrastructure Learning,” which he presented at XSEDE on July 24.

The paper was co-authored by HCDE Professor and SCC lab director Cecilia Aragon, Stephanie Cruz (PhD student in Medical Anthropology), Mette Peters (Sage Bionetworks), and Jeanne Chowning (Northwest Association for Biomedical Research). It provides a human centered game design methodology for science educators and science game designers, as well as design implications for integrating collaborative learning experiences into the usage of large-scale shared computing resources and services. In the talk, Perry detailed their ongoing design process with high school students, undergraduate and graduate students, scientists, and educators in the development of the bioinformatics and cyberinfrastructure learning game Max5.

During the 2013 CHI conference, SCCL lab member and HCDE undergraduate Megan Torkildson competed in the student research competition. Semi-finalists delivered a poster presentation, and finalists were chosen to present a short talk about their research during a conference session. Out of the six selected finalists, Megan was the only undergraduate. She placed second in her category on her work developing a visualization for machine learning errors.

Early this month, SCCL lab member and CSE PhD student Katie Kuksenok attended CHI 2013 in Paris, France. She presented two papers co-authored with lab member Michael Brooks on, “Challenges and Opportunities for Technology in Foreign Language Classrooms” and “Accessible Online Content Creation by End Users”. This year’s conference was the largest in CHI’s history with approximately 3,400 attendees.

In March, SCCL PhD student Michael Brooks and Professor Cecilia Aragon were invited for two weeks as visiting scholars to the Computer Science Department of the University of Chile, to collaborate on research with Professor Barbara Poblete and her students. Thanks to the University of Chile Department of Computer Science for their generous sponsorship of this visit. Professors Poblete and Aragon discovered their overlapping research interests in social media data mining and visualization through their involvement with Latinas in Computing.