Education

Ph.D., Computer Science, University of Massachusetts
Concentration: Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning
Thesis: A Trainable Approach to Co-reference Resolution for Information Extraction
Advisor: Wendy Lehnert

M.S., Computer Science, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Concentration: Software Engineering

B.A., Philosophy, Ripon College

Professional Experience

Strands Labs (Seattle WA)
Principal Instigator (Lab Director), 2/2008-10/2009
Established new innovation lab in Seattle for Corvallis, OR-based Strands, Inc., hired a team of 7, and initiated the development of a new software application, CoCollage, that cultivates community in a cafe using a plasma display to show a dynamic collage of photos and quotes uploaded to a special web site by patrons and staff, signing up 24 coffeehouses and other community-oriented venues around Seattle as partners.

Nokia Research Center (Palo Alto, CA)
Principal Scientist, 2006-2008
Contributed to Nokia's strategy and vision for the future mobile Internet experience, enhanced Nokia Research Center's visibility in the research community, attracted top talent to a new lab with ambitious growth plans, and led the development of the C3 Collage, an application that combines Bluetooth phones, large displays and photo sharing services to promote awareness and interactions in a workplace.

Interrelativity, Inc. (Woodinville, WA)
Founder, Connector-in-Chief, 2004-2006; Chief Technology Officer, 2005-2006
Founded company, assembled a team, directed the technology design, development, sales and marketing of a new generation of proactive display software that enhances personal and professional networking opportunities by showing content from people's online profiles on plasma displays deployed at conferences, meetings and other networking events.

Intel Research (Seattle, WA)
Senior Researcher, 2002-2004
Defined and managed research projects to demonstrate potential user benefits in a future filled with ubiquitous computing technologies; highlights include the Proactive Displays project, which consisted of a suite of three applications (AutoSpeakerID, Ticket2Talk, Neighborhood Window) running on large, public displays augmented with radio frequency identification (RFID) readers, designed to sense and respond in contextually appropriate ways to people nearby, enhancing the awareness and interaction opportunities among conference attendees.

Accenture Technology Labs (Chicago, IL)
Senior Manager, 2000-2002; Manager, 1996-2000
Created visions of how technologies will affect the way we work and live, designed prototypes to illustrate those visions, demonstrated those prototypes and discussed their implications with a variety of internal and external business audiences. Project highlights include:

• Ubiquitous Peripheral Displays, (UniCast, OutCast, GroupCast), illustrating scenarios wherein displays permeate a broad range of settings throughout the physical workplace, providing different types of awareness in different contexts
• Visual Location Awareness Tools (ActiveMap, EventManager), providing location awareness and support for informal communication within and across teams via visualization interfaces and infrared badges and sensors
• MusicFX, a system linking a personnel badge reader, a satellite receiver and a preference database to dynamically adjust the music playing in a fitness center to best suit the group of exercisers at any given time

University of Massachusetts (Amherst, MA)
Graduate Research Assistant, 1990-1996
Developed new approaches for using machine learning and other statistical techniques in a variety of natural language processing system components of information extraction applications – programs that find useful information in texts written by humans, and encode that information in machine-readable form.

Independent Consultant (Amherst, MA)
Principal, 1989-1993
Co-designed, implemented and maintained a suite of statistical process control applications for thread inspection systems manufactured by the client, The Johnson Gage Company.

University of Hartford (Hartford, CT)
Assistant Professor of Computer Science, 1985-1989
Taught undergraduate courses on computer programming, operating systems and artificial intelligence (AI), developed AI concentration and overhauled introductory programming curriculum, advised students and conducted research.

Publications and Presentations

Professional Service