Projects

Ben Shneiderman, Derek L. Hansen, Cody Dunne, Dana Rotman, Elizabeth Bonsignore, and collaborators from Microsoft Research and Telligent are developing NodeXL, a network visualization and analysis plugin for Microsoft Excel. We are currently exploring novel techniques for visualizing large networks, as well as understanding the process novices go through when applying social network analysis to understand online communities. We have developed a NodeXL tutorial for educators that introduces the tool as well as some basic social network analysis concepts.

Bo Xie is currently partnering with local public libraries to provide computer training classes that aim at helping older adults in the community to learn to use the Internet to obtain health information. Her research focuses on the intersection of older age, information and communication technologies, and health, from the levels of community (civic engagement), interpersonal (social relationships), and individual (health and well-being). Her prior work has explored cultural differences among American and Chinese communities of older adult Internet users.

Derek Hansen and collaborators have been empowering online medical support communities by providing them with the Medshelf.org platform, which consists of a customized wiki and suggestions on how to effectively use it. These wiki repositories allow support groups to distill their threaded conversation into an organized set of Web pages. These pages make the information more accessible to newcomers and outsiders and enable group members to collaborate in new and valuable ways. They have partnered with communities coping with cancer, Graves disease, and chronic pain.

Amy Billing, Nancy Atkinson, Bob Gold and others at the Public Health Informatics Lab are in their fifth year of the The Eat Smart, Be Fit, Maryland! project. The project aims to improve the health of low-income Maryland residents by helping them address their nutrition and physical activity needs. This five-year project includes several phases: a comprehensive assets and needs assessment, intervention development/implementation, evaluation, diffusion planning, and statewide dissemination. The associated eat smart website spotlights community events and resources related to healthy eating and exercise.

Scott Paquette is currently working with climate change and environmental scientists to better understand how new knowledge can be generated through collaboration between scientists and communities, who may include local and indigenous communities, governments, industry and NGOs. This work builds upon his prior research that examined how organizations collaborate with their customers through sharing knowledge in order to improve decision making, innovation, and strategy formulation.

Matthew Kirschenbaum and colleagues at [MITH] have developed an online community centerNet for digital humanities centers. The international network is formed for cooperative and collaborative action that will benefit digital humanities and allied fields in general, and centers as humanities cyberinfrastructure in particular.

Christina Pikas sought to obtain in-depth information on how and why scientists use blogs to communicate information. Her research consisted of two parts: qualitative content analysis of a purposeful sample of blogs maintained by scientists and in-depth interviews with scientists who blog.

Dave Yates has conducted research that clarifies how and why knowledge stored in a corporate Electronic Knowledge Repository is retrieved and provides strategies for better organization and identification of stored knowledge. This work has implications for corporate communities of practice.

Neil Fraistat, Matthew Kirschenbaum, Kari Kraus and colleagues associated with MITH are exploring methods for preserving digital games, interactive fiction, and shared realtime virtual spaces. The project is developing basic standards for metadata and content representation and conducting a series of archiving case studies for early video games and electronic literature, as well as Second Life, the popular and influential multi-user online world. This is important research dealing with the preservation of content that is "born digital."

Jeffrey Herrmann has conducted research to create mathematical models of mass dispensing and vaccination clinics (also known as points of dispensing or PODs) and to develop spreadsheet and web-based decision support tools to help emergency preparedness planners plan clinics that have enough capacity to serve residents quickly while avoiding unnecessary congestion. A poor clinic design will have insufficient capacity and long lines of patients waiting for vaccinations. More patients require more space as they wait to receive treatment. If too many patients are in the clinic, they cause congestion, crowding, and confusion.