Ross Teixeira  
Princeton University, USA
Alum

Ross Teixeira is a second-year Ph.D. candidate at Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy, and a Siebel Scholar. His work measures internet infrastructure to answer pressing public policy questions intersecting society and the internet, with an emphasis on privacy, access, and bias against marginalized groups.

Gieard Laput   
Carnegie Mellon, USA
Former Co-Editor-in-Chief

Gierad is a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science, where he specializes in Human-Computer Interaction. His research explores the intersection of sensing and machine learning, enabling fluid, unobtrusive, and more human-centric applications. His research has been published at premiere venues in HCI, receiving multiple Best Paper awards. He is a Qualcomm, Adobe, Yahoo! and Disney Research Fellow, and is a recipient of the prestigious Fast Company Innovation by Design Award.

Johanna Schacht   
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany
Former Special Project Editor

Johanna Schacht is currently pursuing her MSc in industrial engineering and management and holds a BSc in computer science and management. Her studies focus on Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery and her current work concentrates on Knowledge Discovery and Artificial Intelligence in medical applications. In her spare time she enjoys drawing, photographing and hiking tours.

Mariah Knowles  
University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
Former Departments Chief

Mariah is a PhD student at UW-Madison, with a MS in Computer Science and an MA in English Rhetoric and Composition from Western Kentucky University. Her current research is AI Ethics Education.
 

Eliezer Bernart   
Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Former Feature Editor

Eliezer Bernart is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Institute of Informatics). He holds an MSc in Computer Science from Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul and a B.Eng (Hons) in Computer Engineering from the Universidade do Oeste de Santa Catarina. His main research interests are in image processing, computer vision, and pattern recognition. Currently, his research focus is in medical image processing and statistical textural modeling, however, he is passionate and curious about every aspect of Computer Science.

Adrian Scoica   
University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Former Departments Chief

Adrian Scoica is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge. He holds an MPhil in Advanced Computer Science from the University of Cambridge, a BSc in Computer Science from the Politechnica University of Bucharest, and has worked as a Software Engineer on i18n, Machine Learning, and Natural Language Processing problems at Google. His current research interests the application of novel Machine Learning techniques to Natural Language Processing problems, and in his spare time, he enjoys reading, studying foreign languages, and mountain hiking.

Pedro Lopes    
Hasso Plattner Institute, Germany
Former Digital Content Editor

Pedro Lopes is a PhD student in the Human Computer Interaction lab of Prof. Patrick Baudisch at the Hasso Plattner Institute, Germany. Pedro's research focuses on designing, prototyping & understanding mobile immersive interfaces which allow users to experience haptic feedback, such as realistic forces, using a minimal hardware footprint. Pedro sees himself as a computer scientist, artist & t(h)inker.

Gunnar Wolf   
Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN), Mexico
Former Feature Editor, Blogger

Gunnar Wolf recently obtained a MSc degree in Information Security at IPN (Escuela Superior de Ingeniería Mecánica y Eléctrica), and teaches at the undergraduate degree of UNAM (Facultad de Ingeniería). He is a free software advocate, and a developer in the Debian project. As a systems and network administrator for the Economics Research Institute (UNAM), he has had the opportunity to do research on topics that include the social aspects of free software projects. 

Talia Kohen 
Bar Ilan University,Israel
Former Feature Editor

Talia Kohen is a masters student in Bar Ilan University studying Computer Science and focusing on Natural Language Processing. She is looking at automatically detecting trends in the historical evolution of words leveraging the Google Books Corpus. Talia was one out of a total of ten Israeli women selected as Google Anita Borg Finalists, and she is a recipient a Bar Ilan scholarship for her studies. She was a member of the Microsoft Women of Excellence program. Previously, she worked as a systems engineer at Raytheon on their tracking and discrimination system after graduating Cornell in Electrical and Computer Engineering with honors. She hopes one day to be the CEO of her own tech company.

Apoorva Bhalla   
IIIT, Bangalore, India
Former Feature Editor

Apoorva is a masters student at International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Bangalore, India where she is studying Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICTD). She specializes in UX Research and Design for underserved communities in emerging markets such as India. With her knowledge and experience, she wants to build products that will improve the experience of technology for people in resource-constrained environments in developing regions. In the past, she has worked at IIT Delhi, NTU Singapore, and RWTH Aachen, Germany in the field of ICTD, Deep Learning, and Computer Vision respectively. At XRDS, she works as a Feature Editor.

Jeremy Warner   
UC Berkely, USA
Former Feature Editor

Jeremy Warner is a third-year Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley in the EECS department, advised by Björn Hartmann. He studies human-computer interaction and computing education systems, exploring novel collaboration methods, prototyping tools, and teaching platforms. He works in the Berkeley Institute of Design (BiD) and the Algorithms and Computing for Education (ACE) Lab. He also worked as a PhD Research Intern at Autodesk in the User Interface Research group. In undergrad, he worked with Wendi Heinzelman and Philip Guo at the University of Rochester, graduating with an MS in Computer Science and a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering with honors.

Judeth Oden Choi   
Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Former Feature Editor

Judeth Oden Choi is a Ph.D. student at the Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. With a background in theatre, publishing, and community arts, she now studies games, the game design process and other interactive, participatory digital experiences. She is also co-editor and founder of Writ Large Press, experimenting with publishing in a networked world.

Cori Faklaris  
Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Social Media Editor

Cori Faklaris is a PhD student at the Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where she is working on social and playful interventions to strengthen end-user cybersecurity practices. Her other research interests include legal and ethical issues in social computing, human-centered AI and machine learning, and broadening diversity in STEM education and employment. A longtime journalist and social media enthusiast, she returned to academia after a career in both technology-based and public-facing roles for Gannett/Indy Star Media. Follow her (as “@heycori”) on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Ankush Pathak   
Pimpri Chinchwad College of Engineering, Pune, India
Department Editor, News Editor

A third year computer undergraduate studying Computer Engineering at Pimpri Chinchwad College of Engineering, Pune, India. He is the incumbent co-secretary of the PCCOE ACM chapter. His fields of interest include Internet of Things, Algorithms and societal impacts of advances in computing. He enjoys amateur astronomy, reading books and competitive coding.

Ophir Friedler 
Tel Aviv University, Israel
Former Feature Editor

Ophir Friedler is a PhD student at Tel Aviv University. He holds a BSc in Mathematics and Computer Science from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, and an MSc in Computer Science from Tel Aviv University. His research is in Algorithmic Game Theory, focusing on simplicity trade-offs in mechanism design.

Anshuman Majumdar  
International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, India
Department Editor

Anshuman Majumdar is a senior year undergrad pursuing Bachelor of Technology (BTech) in Computer Science and Engineering at IIIT Hyderabad, India. He is currently involved in Computer Vision and Machine Learning research in Centre for Visual Information Technology (CVIT), and Robotics Research Center (RRC), both of which are research centres at IIIT Hyderabad. His research focuses on object detection and classification, and segmentation of natural scenes using Deep Learning algorithms. In his leisure time, he likes to write technical articles on Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and related Mathematics, for his blog named Visual Perception (https://visperception.wordpress.com/)

Parang Saraf  
Virginia Tech, USA
Department Editor

Parang Saraf is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech. His area of specialization is Applied Machine Learning and Data Visualization with special focus on Information Extraction, Text Mining, NLP, and Deep Learning. His current research focuses on Event Detection and Prediction using Open Source Indicators under the umbrella of $20M IARPA funded EMBERS project. He is the winner of 2014 VAST visualization challenge and has been a recipient of 2016 Youden Award from the American Society for Quality and 2013 Pratt Fellowship for being an outstanding graduate student. He completed his undergraduate studies in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.

Oana Niculaescu  
University of Massachusetts Boston, USA
Department Editor

Oana is a PhD Candidate at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Engineering from the University Politehnica of Bucharest. Her main area of research is differential privacy and database security. However, she is interested in how technology can shape and influence policy making and curious about Machine Learning, Data Analytics and AI.

Andrew J Hunsucker   
Indiana University, USA
Former Department Editor, Blogger

Andrew J Hunsucker is a PhD student at Indiana University in the School of Informatics and Computing studying interaction design pedagogy. He recently received his Master’s degree in Human Computer Interaction-Design from Indiana University, and his other research interests include storytelling, games, and augmented reality. His research is focused on understanding how designers are taught, and ensuring that they are learning the skills they need to succeed in their professional lives.

Harsh V. Thakkar 
University of Bonn, Germany
Former Department Editor

Harsh is a Marie Sk?odowska-Curie Fellow Ph.D. student at the Smart Data Analytics Lab of the University of Bonn, Germany under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Jens Lehmann and Prof. Dr. Sören Auer. His research interests include Graph Data Management, Benchmarking, Graph Query Languages and Question Answering. He earned Master of Technology and Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science from SVNIT, Surat and L.D. College of Engineering, Ahmedabad in India respectively.

Jennifer Jacobs   
MIT, USA
Former Editor-in-Chief

Jennifer Jacobs is a Ph.D. student at the MIT Media Lab in the Lifelong Kindergarten Research Group. Her research examines ways to diversify participation and practice in computer programming by building expressive computational tools for art, design, digital fabrication, and craft. Jennifer received a Masters of Science from MIT and a Masters of Fine Art from Hunter College in Manhattan.

Okke Schrijvers   
Stanford, USA
Former Editor-in-Chief

Okke Schrijvers is a PhD student at Stanford University who focuses on Algorithmic Game Theory. He's interested in applying research insights to practice, and in the societal impacts of technology.

Nidhi Rastogi   
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), USA
Former Feature Editor

Ms. Nidhi Rastogi is pursuing PhD in Computer Science at RPI with research in Cyber Security of distributed systems. Prior to joining RPI, she worked in the industry for four years in security and remote management of wireless devices on cellular networks at Verizon Wireless, NJ, and security of devices operating on the smart grid at Logic Technology Inc., Schenectady for the client GE Global Research Center, Niskayuna. Nidhi also has a Masters in Computer Science from the University of Cincinnati, OH.

Yang Shen   
UCLA, USA
Former Feature Editor

Yang Shen is a Ph.D. candidate from Bionics Lab, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at University of California - Los Angeles. He holds a B.Eng. in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Hong Kong and a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering and Automation from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His research focuses on exoskeleton robotics and its applications on post-stroke rehabilitation.

Shefali Bhatnagar   
Amity University, Noida, India
Former Department Editor

Shefali Bhatnagar is a fourth-year Computer Science and Engineering student at Amity University, Noida, India. She has been interested in Computers and writing since an early age, contributing to startup products as well as newsletters and research papers in college. She has been a part of the managing committees of annual events on campus. She's currently looking forward to a Masters in Computer Science, possibly abroad.

Dr. Anirban Basu   
Tokai University, Japan
Former Department Editor

Anirvana Mishra 
Delhi Technological University, Delhi, India
Former Department Editor

Anirvana Mishra is a third-year Bachelor of Engineering student in computer engineering at Delhi Technological University, Delhi, India. His research interests include semantic web and natural language processing. He is a young developer at the Mozilla Foundation. He is a Google Summer of Code 2010 student at Mozilla.

Apoorvaa Singh 
Inderprastha Engineering College, India
Former Department Editor

Apoorvaa is an undergraduate student of the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, at Inderprastha Engineering College, India. Her interests include networks and security, programming languages, algorithms, game design, use of ICT for education, neural networks in weather forecasting.

Arka Bhattacharya 
Columbia University, New York, USA
Former Department Editor

Arka Bhattacharya is a first year graduate student at the Columbia University in New York, studying mathematics, theoretical computer science and physics. His research interests include algorithms, complexity theory, quantum computation and number theory. Know about his research.

Asmaa Rabie    
Cairo University, Egypt
Former Department Editor

Asmaa Rabie was affiliated with Cairo University at the faculty of engineering as a teaching and research assistant. She holds the BSc degree in computer engineering and is pursuing her MSc degree at the same university. Her interests include Machine Learning, Inertial Navigation and Robotics, and her current research is focused on Gesture Recognition using mobile inertial sensors.

Ben Deverett   
McGill University, Canada
Former Department Editor

Ben Deverett is a third year undergraduate student at McGill University studying neuroscience and computer science. He has an interest in neural computation. He enjoys playing music, acting, snowboarding, and the outdoors.

Billy Rathje 
University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Former Feature Editor

Billy Rathje is a junior at the University of Puget Sound majoring in computer science and English literature. His interests include bioinformatics and scientific computing. He has worked at the Oregon Health & Science University’s Proteomics Research Core, is a writing tutor, and enjoys app development, music, and theatre.

Chris Harrison 
Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Former Editor-in-Chief

Chris Harrison is a Ph.D. student in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. His research focuses on novel interaction techniques and input technologies - especially those that enable (small) mobile devices to appropriate (large) everyday surfaces for interaction. Chris Joined XRDS in the Summer of 2009 as Editor-in-Chief. Chris left XRDS to focus on writing his dissertation.

Claudia Schulz  
Imperial College London,UK
Former Department Editor

Claudia Schulz studied Cognitive Science at the University of Osnabrueck (Germany) and Artificial Intelligence at Imperial College London (UK). She is now a PhD student at Imperial College working on logic-based methods in Artificial Intelligence. Besides her PhD she is an active member and the current chair of the Imperial College ACM Student Chapter.

Daniel Gooch   
University of Bath, UK
Former Department Editor

Daniel is a Ph.D. student at the University of Bath where he also completed his B.Sc. and M.Sc. His interests lie within the HCI field, most specifically in Tangible Interaction and Social Presence although anything else which is interesting may gather some attention... Outside university, his interests include karate, scouting and most outdoor activities. When not studying he can be found at people.bath.ac.uk/~dg216 or in the dojo.

Debarka Sengupta is currently a research fellow in the Machine Intelligence Unit of Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. He is an early third year PhD candidate with interest in computational biology. His current research focuses on modeling of the miRNA mediated regulations in human. His research interest also covers some specific domains of the classical electoral theories of Economics. This software engineer turned researcher likes to sing when he is not in front of a computer. He is a gold medalist in North Indian classical music.

Derek Bronish 
Ohio State University, USA
Former Department Editor

Derek Bronish is a Ph.D. student at the Ohio State University. Derek received his undergraduate and Master's degrees at Ohio State, majoring in Computer Science & Engineering and minoring in Philosophy and Linguistics. His research concerns automated verification of functional programming languages. He enjoys teaching, playing guitar, and collecting fountain pens.

Dmitry Batenkov 
Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
Former Department Editor

After completing his B.A. in Computer Science from the Technion, Israel, Dmitry Batenkov decided to make a course correction. Now he is pursuing a Ph.D. in Mathematics, trying to enjoy the best of both worlds.

Doris Lee  
University of California, Berkeley, USA
Former News Editor

Doris Lee is a sophomore undergraduate student at University of California, Berkeley studying physics and astronomy. She is interested in applying methods in computer science, such as parallel computing and statistical machine learning, to data from imaging sky surveys or astrophysical simulations. She is also a student at Berkeley's Human Computer Interaction Group, focussing on developing prototyping materials accessible for makers and designer, and technology used for STEM education.

University of California - Berkeley, USA
Former Feature Editor

Erin Carson is a Ph.D. student in the EECS Department at University of California- Berkeley. Her interests include parallel, scientific, and high performance computing. Erin joined the Crossroads team in Fall 2009 as Chief Copy Editor, and is currently working as a Features Editor.

Fahad Khalid
Hasso Plattner Institut
Former Blogger

Fahad Khalid is a Ph.D. student with the HPI Research School on Service Oriented Systems Engineering, and member of the Operating Systems and Middleware Group. His research is in the area of programming models for Hybrid Parallel Computing. He focuses on devising strategies and developing frameworks that make it possible to balance the productivity vs. performance tradeoff inherent in programming massively parallel accelerator architectures. In addition to his core research, Fahad is involved in interdisciplinary collaborative projects focusing on parallel simulations for Computational Biology and Geophysics. The collaboration partners for these projects are Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology and GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences. Prior to joining the HPI, Fahad has worked as software developer for large-scale telecommunications software systems such as the Ericsson Real-time Charging system. He has also worked as system architect for a Provisioning & Service Activation product. He has over five years of professional experience in software design, development, as well as automated testing. Fahad studied Computer Science in Pakistan, and Artificial Intelligence in Sweden.

Finn Kuusisto 
University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
Former Department Editor

Finn completed his PhD in the Computer Sciences department at UW-Madison in 2015, doing research in machine learning with Drs. Jude Shavlik and David Page. His work focused primarily on breast cancer prediction applications related to over-diagnosis, estimation of individualized treatment effects, and precision medicine in general.

Gideon Juve 
University of Southern California
Former Department Editor

Gideon Juve is a Ph.D. student in computer science at the University of Southern California. His research interests include distributed and high-performance computing, scientific workflows, and computational science.

Hanieh Moshki 
HEC Montreal, Canada
Former Feature Editor

Hanieh Moshki is a Ph.D. student in the Information Technology Department at HEC Montreal. She holds a Master’s degree in Business Engineering and Computer Science from Vienna University of Technology. Her interests include technology-enabled multi-tasking, designing and evaluating interruptions and notifications in collaborative groupware, and design that increases privacy and legal awareness of individual users.

Dimitris Mitropoulos 
Athens University of Economics and Business
Former Blogger

Dimitris Mitropoulos is a researcher at the Athens University of Economics and Business. During his studies he has worked in the industry as a software engineer and has been involved in several EU funded R&D projects. His research interests include information security, intrusion detection systems, static code analysis and software engineering.

Maria Kechagia   
Athens University of Economics and Business
Former Blogger

Maria Kechagia is a Ph.D. candidate at Athens University of Economics and Business, in the Department of Management Science and Technology. She holds a B.Sc. in Management Science and Technology and an M.Sc. in Computing (Software Engineering) from Imperial College London. She has participated in EU funded R&D projects. Currently, she is the project manager of the STEREO project. She is an IEEE student and IEEE Women In Engineering (WIE) member, as well as an ACM student and ACM-Women (ACM-W) member. Her research interests include the design and implementation of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and the study of open source software.

Norene Kelly   
Iowa State University, USA
Former Blogger

Norene Kelly is a Ph.D. candidate in Human Computer Interaction at Iowa State University with a passion for elevating and advancing the user experience.

Olivia Simpson   
University of California, San Diego
Former Blogger

Olivia Simpson is a Ph.D. student in the Computer Science department at University of California, San Diego. Her research interests are in graph theory and network science—problems such as clustering approximating properties of graphs. She is a contributor for the XRDS blog, writing on results and thoughts in theoretical computer science.

Prachi Kumar   
University of California, Los Angeles
Former Blogger

Prachi is a graduate student in Computer Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her interests lie in the fields of Data Mining, Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing.

Udayan Umapathi   
MIT Media Lab, USA
Former Blogger

Udayan is an artist, engineer, designer and a HCI researcher. He is currently pursuing his MS/PhD at the MIT Media Lab with Prof.Hiroshi Ishii. His research statement quotes that he wants to invent 'novel mediums for expression and creativity'. His work looked at digital fabrication tools as platform to create these mediums and investigated how to turn these tools themselves into the novel mediums. He has his own digital media company and has also founded a silicon valley company that focuses on making low-tech tools for digital fabrication. If Udayan is not making something at a lab, he is playing with nature, engaging with new people, studying cultural aspects and wondering why people are the way they are.

Hannah Pileggi   
Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Former Feature Editor

Hannah Pileggi is a second-year Ph.D. student working jointly in the Information Interfaces (ii) Lab and Electronic Learning Communities (ELC) Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research is in designing, implementing, and evaluating interactive visualization systems that aid in insight-gathering for collaborative groups of people, most recently in working to motivate the bystanders of cyberbullying. She earned her B.Sc. from Carnegie Mellon in statistics.

Inbal Talgam-Cohen   
Stanford University, USA
Former co - Editor in Chief

Inbal Talgam-Cohen is a PhD student at Stanford's theory group. She holds a Master's degree in Computer Science from the Weizmann Institute and a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Law from Tel-Aviv University. Her research focuses on algorithmic game theory.

James Stanier   
University of Sussex, UK
Departments Chief 2009-2011

James served as Departments Chief of XRDS from 2009 to 2011. During this time he was completing his doctorate at the University of Sussex, where he was exploring ways to compile programs using data flow information to make them smaller and faster. Now, James currently works at Brandwatch as a researcher and developer. Some of the projects that he has worked on recently include influence metrics for web pages, discovering Twitter trends automatically, and prototyping quick ways of finding similar web pages.

Richard Gomer   
University of Southampton, UK
Former Feature Editor

Richard Gomer is a PhD student in the Web and Internet Science group at the University of Southampton, in the UK. He holds a BSc in Computer Science and MSc in Web Science, both from Southampton. His main research interests are around choice architecture and subconscious decision making in online environments, particularly related to productivity and privacy.

Jason Thibodeau   
University of Connecticut
Former Department Editor

Jason Thibodeau is an Electrical Engineering Ph.D. student and a GAANN fellow at the University of Connecticut. His research focuses on Hardware Security and Trust, with concentration on FPGAs. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering in Computer Engineering from UConn. He worked as an embedded software engineer before returning to his alma mater for graduate work.

Jed Brubaker,   
UC Irvine, USA
Former Feature Editor

Jed Brubaker is a PhD candidate in Informatics at the School of Information and Computer Sciences at UC Irvine. His research focuses on digital identity, social computing, social media. He previously earned his M.A. at Georgetown University in Communication, Culture and Technology, and his B.S. at the University of Utah in Psychology.

Jeffrey Tzu Kwan Valino Koh   
National University of Singapore, Singapore
Former Department Editor

Jef is a PhD Candidate at the National University of Singapore, where his research interests focus on various topics regarding interactivity and experiential design. Before pursuing his PhD he worked as a catwalk designer for PRADA as well as an exhibition designer for the Office for Metropolitan Architecture. He has also exhibited as an artist at venues such as the Barbican and Southbank Centre in London, UK and for festivals such as the Singapore Design Festival in 2009.

John Kloosterman   
Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI, USA
Former Department Editor

John Kloosterman is a student at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI, United States. His interests include programming languages and compilers, computing and society, and the application of computing to the humanities.

Luigi De Russis is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Computer Science and Automation of Politecnico di Torino. He holds a Master's degree in Computer Engineering from Politecnico di Torino in 2010. His current research focuses on Human-Computer Interaction, with a particular interest on distributed user interfaces and interaction techniques applied to smart environments and intelligent domotic systems.

Malay Bhattacharyya 
Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India
Former Feature Editor

Malay Bhattacharyya is a Ph.D. student at the Machine Intelligence Unit of Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India since 2007. He encompasses the broad domains of graph theory, soft computing, computational biology, and bioinformatics in his research. He also enjoys sketching and writing songs. He has about thirty research publications in peer-reviewed journals, book chapters and proceedings of international conferences. Malay is with XRDS since the beginning of 2009.

Marinka Zitnik   
University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Former Department Editor

Marinka Zitnik is a Ph.D. student at the University of Ljubljana. She holds a B.Sc. in computer science and mathematics from University of Ljubljana. She also did her research at the University of Toronto, Imperial College London and Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX. Her interests include mathematical modelling, artificial intelligence, machine learning and probabilistic numerics. Problems she investigates are motivated by current research in bioinformatics and systems biology.

Marius-Tudor Benea    
UPMC, France & UPB, Romania
Former Department Editor, Former News Editor

Marius-Tudor Benea is enrolled in a jointly-supervised Ph.D. at University Politehnica of Bucharest (Romania) and University Pierre and Marie Curie (France) and he has a background in computer science and artificial intelligence. Among his interests we count multi-agent systems, ambient intelligence and brain-inspired computing. His current research is focused on agent-oriented approaches to ambient intelligence.

Michael Bernstein   
MIT, USA
Former Feature Editor

Michael Bernstein is a Ph.D. student in computer science at MIT. His research focuses on human-computer interaction and social computing. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Forbes, TechCrunch and Lifehacker, and his tools are used by thousands on the web. He is the recipient of graduate research fellowships from NSF and Xerox. He earned M.Sc. in Computer Science from MIT in 2008 and a B.S. in Symbolic Systems with honors and distinction from Stanford University in 2006.

Michael Zuba   
University of Connecticut, USA
Former Feature Editor

Michael Zuba is a Ph.D. candidate in the Underwater Sensor Networks (UWSN) Lab at the University of Connecticut (UConn). His research is in underwater acoustic communication and networking,  autonomous vehicle networks,  computer security and biomedical informatics. He earned his B.S. and M.S. from UConn.

Peter Kinnaird   
Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Former co-Editor in Chief

Peter Kinnaird is a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon's Human Computer Interaction Institute. He holds a Masters in HCI and a BS in Computer Science from Georgia Tech. His research focuses on social computing, crowdsourcing, and civic participation.

Poornima Kalyan Sundaram 
University of Southern California, CA, USA
Former Web Editor

Poornima is a Masters student at the Department of Computer Science, University of Southern California. She is an active sport programmer. Her interests include Computer Networks and Systems.

Rob Simmons   
Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Former Department Editor

Rob Simmons is a fifth-year graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University's Computer Science Department. He research is aimed at using computers to prove that concurrent programs and distributed systems work the way their designers intended.

Roger Finnegan   
Capella University, USA
Former Department Editor

Roger Finnegan is a Ph.D. candidate in information technology at Capella University. His interests include information ecosystems and particularly information food webs. His experiences include teaching information technology courses at Metropolitan State University in Minneapolis, MN and consulting for Fortune 500 companies.

Ryan Kelly   
University of Bath, United Kingdom
Former Feature Editor

Ryan Kelly is a PhD student in the HCI group at the University of Bath. He holds a Masters in HCI and a BSc in Applied Psychology & Computing. His current research explores how people divide work and remain aware of joint progress during computer-mediated collaboration.

Ryan K.L.Ko   
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Former Feature Editor

Ryan K L Ko is a Ph.D. researcher at the Nanyang Technological University’s Advanced Design and Modelling Laboratory. His research focuses on the dynamic formulation of cross-enterprise business processes using a combination of techniques from artificial intelligence (AI) planning, Semantic Web, and service-oriented computing. He has a deep interest in the Semantic Web, particularly ontologies, and making computer systems more natural to human users via the augmentation of semantics and pragmatics.

Sean Follmer   
Stanford, USA
Former Editor-in-Chief

Sean Follmer is a PhD student at the MIT Media Lab in the Tangible Media Group. He Holds a BS in Engineering from Stanford University. His research in the field of Human Computer Interaction focuses on shape changing user interface technology and interaction patterns.

Sergiy Bogomolov   
Institute of Science and Technology, Austria
Former Feature Editor

Sergiy is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria). He completed his PhD at the University of Freiburg, Germany. His research broadly concerns the development of algorithms for the design and analysis of cyber-physical systems.

Shawn Freeman   
University of Waterloo, Canada
Former Department Editor

Shawn Freeman is currently a Masters student at University of Waterloo. He is studying Management Science in the Department of Engineering alongside his employment in the Energy industry. Shawn has a passion for travel and has studied in Australia. When he is not traveling the globe you can find him enjoying intense games of squash, relaxing jogs with his dog and adventures in the nearby mountains. His technical interests are data structures, knowledge management and business process management.

Shelby Solomon Darnell   
Clemson University, SC, USA
Former Web Editor

Shelby S. Darnell is a PhD student in Clemson University's School of Computing. Mr. Darnell's research melds pattern recognition, computational intelligence, and affective computing in order to define and automatically recognize engagement.

Shudong Hao 
University of Colorado Boulder, USA
Former Feature Editor

Shudong Hao is a PhD student at University of Colorado Boulder whose research topic is focused on using topic models to efficiently analyze multilingual corpus, especially for low-resource languages. Previously, he was a student at Beijing Forestry University, where he co-founded the first Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. In his spare time, he enjoys painting and writing.

Somdip Dey   
The University of Manchester, UK
Former Department Editor

Somdip Dey is currently a M.Sc. student of Advanced Computer Science with a specialization in Computer Systems Engineering at the University of Manchester. He holds a B.Sc. (Hons.) in Computer Science from St. Xavier’s College (Autonomous), Kolkata, India. His research interests include Applied Cryptography, Information Security, Computer Systems Engineering, Mobile Computing, High Performance Computing, Neurorobotics and e-Learning technologies. When not doing research, Somdip loves to ponder on philosophical problems or go on adventurous trips.

Tom Bartindale   
University of Newcastle
Former Departments Chief

Tom Bartindale is a Ph.D. student in Human Computer Interaction at Newcastle University, UK. He primarily works multi-touch and tangible interaction, which benefits from his past experience in event management and his skills in hardware design and implementation.

Sumit Narayan   
University of Connecticut
Former Feature Editor

Sumit Narayan is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Connecticut. He earned his M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Connecticut in 2004 and his B.E. in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the University of Madras in 2002. He has worked as Engineer (Storage) for MindTree Consulting, Bangalore, India in 2005 and as Research Officer for Data Storage Institute (A*STAR), Singapore in 2005-2006. His current research interests include file systems, distributed storage and parallel I/O systems.

Suranga Nath Kasthurirathne   
Indiana University- Purdue University, USA
Former Feature Editor

Suranga Nath Kasthurirathne is a second year Ph.D. student in Health Informatics at the Indiana University - Purdue University (IUPUI), Indianapolis. He is a long standing contributor to the OpenMRS and OpenHIE projects. He also serves as co-organization administrator to the OpenMRS Google Summer of Code and Google Code-in programs, both of which are focussed on mentoring computer science students to contribute to Open Source programs.
Suranga is also a fellow of the Regenstrief Global Health Informatics (GHI) group. His research interests include Global Health Informatics, Standards and interoperability.

Vaggelis Giannikas   
University of Cambridge, UK
Former Departments Chief

Vaggelis Giannikas is currently a Ph.D. student in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge looking at Intelligent Products and RFID. He holds a BSc in Management Science and Technology from the Athens University of Economics and Business. He has worked as a research associate in Greek research groups and an IT solution provider. His research interests include knowledge-based information systems, supply chain information systems and open source software. Vaggelis also teaches music theory and plays classical guitar.

Vicente García Díaz   
University of Oviedo, Asturias, Spain
Former Department Editor

Vicente García Díaz is a Computer Engineer, Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oviedo, Asturias (Spain). His research interests include model-driven engineering, domain-specific languages, project risk management, software development processes and practices. He has graduated in Prevention of Occupational Risks and a Certified Associate in Project Management by Project Management Institute.

Virginie Lerays   
Universite Denis Diderot, Paris 7, France
Former Feature Editor

Virginie Lerays is a PhD student at LIAFA's algorithmic and complexity group (Paris 7). She holds her master degree in Mathematics and Logic in Paris 7 and her research focuses on complexity theory and quantum computing.

Tejas Khot    
University of Mumbai, India
Former Department Editor

Tejas Khot is currently a visiting research scholar at the Machine Learning and Perception Lab at Virginia Tech. He completed his Bachelors in Computer Engineering from University of Mumbai, India. He is interested in AI research dealing with multiple modalities and is working on Visual Question Answering. The ideas of embodied cognition fascinate him and he wants to explore them at some point in his research career. He is an avid reader and enjoys debating on critical issues.

Jay Patel  
University of California, Berkeley, USA
Former Department Editor

Jay Patel is an undergraduate student at University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include system security, distributed computing, and crowdsourcing platforms.

David Byrd   
University of Baltimore, USA
Former Department Editor, Former Blogger

David Byrd is a doctoral student in the Information and Interaction Design Program of the Yale Gordon College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Baltimore (Maryland, USA). His research interest is in the effective dissemination of governmental archival holdings to a wide variety of audiences. He holds a master’s degree in international studies, and bachelors’ in both history and political science. His career to date has been spent in research, analysis, and writing on a variety of historical topics. He is an avid baseball player, photographer, and, mostly, dad.

Vero Estrada-Galinanes   
University of Neuchatel, Switzerland
Former News Editor

Vero Estrada-Galinanes is PhD student in the Complex Systems research group at the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland. She also collaborates with the Storage Systems Research Center at University of California Santa Cruz. Her interests are reliability, data entanglement, security and systems architecture among other things. She holds a Master degree in Applied Computer Science from University of Tokyo and a M.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of Buenos Aires.

Soumya Jindal   
Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, India
Former News Editor

Soumya Jindal is an undergraduate student in Computer Science and Engineering. Her interests include Computer Architecture, Ubiquitous Computing, Human-Computer Interaction, Machine Learning, Robotics, and Embedded System

Nur Al-Huda Hamdan    
RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Former Department Editor, Blogger

Nur Al-huda Hamdan is a PhD candidate and research assistant at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. Her research focus is on designing and evaluating new interaction techniques for wearables and textile interfaces. She is also doing research on technology that can facilitate the integration of Syrian refugees in Germany.