My job search was successfully concluded with a tenure-track position at Michigan State University. I leave this page available so others can see my job search materials and hopefully learn from them.
I am currently looking for a tenure track faculty position related to HCI, CSCW, Social Media, and Social Computing at a competitive research university.
Right now, I am a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Telecommunications, Information Studies, and Media at Michigan State University. I recently received my PhD from the School of Information at the University of Michigan. My advisor was Jeffrey MacKie-Mason.
Here is my CV, my research and teaching statements, 2 sample publications, and 2 current papers prepared for submission:
I often see people discussing how to build social media systems; indeed, many classes are taught on the subject. Most of these discussions focus on technical features: database design, REST APIs, explicit social networks, tags, etc. But building a social media system also means designing the desired social behaviors: contributing articles, updating statuses, rating posts, and commenting. Facebook wouldn’t be interesting without regular ‘status updates’ from a wide variety of people. In my research, I identify incentive mechanisms: technological design patterns that lead to predictable, desirable behavior. Having a toolbox of incentive mechanisms allows us to move from building technical systems to engineering socio-technical systems. Identifying these causal relationships also allows us to better understand the use of these systems, and the effects these systems have on their users.
To identify and characterize incentive mechanisms, I draw on theories of motivation and incentives from human-computer interaction, economics, communications, and social psychology to understand, explain, and then predict behavior of users. I combine these theories with my computer science background to identify and design technical features that can reliably induce desired behaviors across a wide variety of computer systems. I use this interdisciplinary approach because these systems are inherently socio-technical; their effectiveness depends critically on both the social behavior and the technical design of the system. I use a variety of approaches to study incentive mechanisms in social media; my research includes economic modeling, quantitative server log analysis, both lab and field experiments, and qualitative inquiry.
In addition to my research, I am also in teaching topics related to my research. In particular, I would be interested in teaching classes about how technology and social behavior combine to form valuable systems. This involves teaching classes on technology, such as web programming and UI design. It also involves teaching classes on social behavior, such as classes on information economics or theories of motivation and behavior. It also, of course, involves teaching classes at this interesting intersection of technology and behavior: classes on social computing/social media, media effects, incentives in social computing, CSCW, etc. I also have experience teaching classes related to practicing these skills, such as project management.