Rick Wash

Assistant Professor

Department of Telecommunications, Information Studies, and Media, and School of Journalism
Michigan State University

1819 Clifton Ave
Lansing, MI 48910

Voice: 734-730-1188
Email: wash@msu.edu
Web: http://www.rickwash.com

Research Interests

Understanding and designing software systems that influence the incentives people encounter in using these system, particularly for information security and social computing systems.

Appointments

Assistant Professor. Department of Telecommunications, Information Studies, and Media and the School of Journalism, Michigan State University. 2010-
Visiting Assistant Professor. Department of Telecommunications, Information Studies, and Media, Michigan State University. 2009-2010

Education

PhD, School of Information, University of Michigan, 2009
Masters of Science, Computer Science, University of Michigan, 2005
Bachelors of Science, Computer Science, Case Western Reserve University, 2002

Fellowships, Research Grants, and Major Awards

  • National Science Foundation, “CT-ER: Incentive Centered Technology Design for Home User Security.” CNS 0716196, Jeffrey MacKie-Mason PI. 2007-2009. Budget: $200,000. Unofficial co-PI
  • National Science Foundation IGERT Fellowship, 2002-2004
  • Gary M. Olson Outstanding PhD Student Award. School of Information, University of Michigan. 2008

Dissertation

“Motivating Contributions for Home Computer Security.” Rick Wash. University of Michigan, 2009.
Chair: Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason

Journal Articles

Conference Proceedings

  • Rick Wash. “Folk Models of Home Computer Security.” Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS) 2010. (PDF)
  • Cliff Lampe, Rick Wash, Alcides Velasquez, and Elif Ozkaya. “Motivations to Participate in Online Communities.” ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing (CHI) (2010). (PDF)
  • Emilee Rader and Rick Wash. “Influences on Tag Choices in del.icio.us.” Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) (2008). (PDF)
  • Rick Wash and Jeffrey MacKie-Mason. “Security When People Matter: Structuring Incentives For User Behavior.” Proceedings of the International Conference on Electronic Commerce (ICEC) (2007). (PDF)
  • Rick Wash and Emilee Rader. “Public Bookmarks and Private Benefits: An Analysis of Incentives in Social Computing.” Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) Annual Meeting (2007). (PDF)
  • Rick Wash, Libby Hemphill, and Paul Resnick. “Design Decisions in the RideNow Project.” Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Supporting Group Work (GROUP) (2005). (PDF)
  • Thede Loder, Marshall Van Alstyne, and Rick Wash. “An Economic Solution to the Spam Problem.” Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC) (2004). (PDF)

Refereed Workshop Presentations and Extended Abstracts

  • Lampe, C., Ellison, N., Vitak, J., Wohn, Y., & Wash, R. (2010). “Social sensemaking: Propensity to use Facebook to reduce classroom equivocality.” Paper to be presented at the 60th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association, Singapore.
  • Rick Wash and Emilee Rader. “Using Economic Modeling to Predict User Behavior.” (2010) In Understanding Online Behavior, a workshop at CHI 2010.
  • Rick Wash. “Incentive Design for Home Computer Security.” Extended Abstract in iConference, Doctoral Colloquium (2008).
  • Rick Wash. “Mental Models of Home Computer Security.” Extended Abstract in SOUPS, The Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security, Poster Session. (July 2008)
  • Rick Wash and Jeff MacKie-Mason. “A Social Mechanism for Home Computer Security.”  Workshop on Information Systems and Economics (WISE). (December 2008)
  • Rick Wash and Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason. “Incentive Design for Home Computer Security.” Presented at iConference 2008, Poster Session. (2008)
  • Rick Wash and Emilee Rader. “Understanding del.icio.us Tag Choice using Simulations.” In iConference 2008, Papers Track (2008).
  • Rick Wash. “Incentive Design for Home Computer Security.” Extended Abstract In ACM SIGCHI Conference on Computer-Human Interaction, Doctoral Consortium (2007).
  • Emilee Rader and Rick Wash. “Tagging with del.icio.us: Social or Selfish?” Extended Abstract in Computer Support Cooperative Work (CSCW) 06 Poster Session. (Nov. 2006)
  • Rick Wash and Jeffrey MacKie-Mason. “Incentive Centered Design and Information Security.” Presented at the First Workshop on Hot Topics in Security (HotSec 06). (Jul. 2006)
  • Thede Loder, Marshall van Alstyne, and Rick Wash. “An Economic Solution to the Spam Problem.”  Presented at the MIT Spam Conference. (Jan. 2004)
  • Thede Loder, Marshall van Alstyne, and Rick Wash. “An Economic Response to Unsolicited Communications.” Presented at the Workshop on Information Systems and Economics (WISE). (Dec. 2004).
  • Jose Nazario, Jeremy Anderson, Rick Wash, and Chris Connelly. “The Future of Internet Worms.” In Blackhat Briefings (2001).

Working Papers

  • Donghee Yvette Wohn, Cliff Lampe, Nicole Ellison, Rick Wash, and Jessica Vitak. “The “S” in Social Network Games: Initiating, Maintaining, and Enhancing Relationships” (June 2010).
  • Rick Wash and Jeff MacKie-Mason. “Using a Minimum Threshold to Motivate Contribution to Social Computing.” (Jun. 2009). Part of my dissertation.
  • Rick Wash. “Content Provision under Digital Rights Management.” (Dec. 2005).
  • Rick Wash. “Lecture Notes on Stream Ciphers and RC4.” (Sep. 2001). Case Western Reserve University.

Invited Talks

  • Rick Wash and Jeffrey MacKie-Mason. “Incentive-Centered Design for Information Security.” At DIMACS Workshop on Information Security Economics (2007).
  • Rick Wash and Jeffrey MacKie-Mason. “Incentive-Centered Design for Information Security.” At Ford Information Technology Seminar (2007).
  • Rick Wash. “The Economics of Malevolence in Cyberspace.” (Mar. 2005). Invited Talk at Case Western Reserve University.
  • Rick Wash. “The Security of Trusted Computing.” (February 2004). Invited Talk at Case Western Reserve University.
  • Rick Wash. “The Digital Millenium Copyright Act.” (February 2002). Given at the CWRU Chapter of the ACM.

Teaching Experience

  • Instructor: JRN 492: Special Topics: Computing and Journalism. JRN, Michigan State University. Fall 2010.
  • Instructor: TC 458: Project Management, TISM, Michigan State University. Spring 2010.
  • Instructor: TC 449: Server-Side Web Development, TISM, Michigan State University. Spring 2010.
  • Co-superviser, Undergraduate Summer Research Intern. Rachel Lipson. NSF REU, Summer 2008
  • Facilitator, “Getting Started: GSIs Teaching Graduate Students.” GSI Teaching Orientation, University of Michigan. Fall 2007, Winter 2008, and Fall 2008
  • Graduate Student Instructor: SI 540 Understanding Networked Computing, School of Information, University of Michigan. Fall 2006.
  • Graduate Student Instructor: SI 502 Choice and Decision Making, School of Information, University of Michigan. Winter 2006.
  • Graduate Student Instructor: EECS 381 Advanced Object Oriented Programming, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Michigan. Fall 2004.
  • Teaching Assistant: ECES 381 Intro to Operating Systems, Computer Engineering and Science, Case Western Reserve University. Spring 2001.
  • Teaching Assistant: ENGR 101 Intro to Computer Science, College of Engineering, Case Western Reserve University. Fall 1999.

Service

I am on the CHI 2010 Program Committee (Associate Chair)
I was Student Volunteer Coordinator for ACM E-Commerce 2006.
I was an external reviewer for Journal of Electronic Commerce, ICIS 2006, ACM E-Commerce 2007 & 2008, CHI 2008 & 2009, iConference 2008, CSCW 2008, WWW 2008 and ACM GROUP 2009.

Previous Work Experience

  • Cigital Labs. Research Intern. Summer 2001. Developed a research prototype intrusion detection system.
  • Microsoft. Software Development Engineer in Test Intern. Summer 1999 and Summer 2000. Developed automated tests for Microsoft Commerce Server. Developed an automated stress testing system.

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