University Research Programs in FLOSS?
Last fall I applied to several universities to continue with a PhD in human-computer interaction (aka human-centered computing or user-centered design) with the intent of researching human factors and design issues in health informatics. I realised today that health informatics is only a professional interest and not something I want to spend the next many years of my life researching. Open source software is a huge part of my life and I don’t intend to put it on the back burner for a few years while I work on something else.
As a result, I am back to finding a university, program, or professor who has similar research interests (design/usability/methods in open source software) with plans to reapply to more appropriate universities this fall. The problem is, none of the HCI/HCC/UCD related programs I have found have labs, research projects, or professors interested in open source software. I’m back to square one and not sure where to begin my search.
So if any of you know of university programs focused on open source software research, professors with design and/or open source software interests, or even research labs or companies who would want to fund open source graduate research, please let me know.
Dr. Heike Winschiers, while not being a professor herself, might be able to help you. Just contact her at hwinschiers at polytechnic dot edu dot na. Tell her that I referred you to her.
Uwe
I am finishing my masters thesis on sunday :)
Regarding your request, would Norway be an option?
My proffesor here at the University of Bergen is a huge fan of open source software (he also has lot’s of experience from it), and is also mentoring a PhD in HCI.
I think you would easily find what you are looking for here.
I’m really looking forward to finishing my thesis :)
If you would like to see what Southern Spain is like, I know of a research group at my home city university… the UCO (Universidad de Córdoba). They are developing some nice apps and they seem to be focused on usability - I think they have a usability lab -or so-, and they also deal with technologies for disabled people. Probably they will be open for new people and your experience would be a very good passport (also a good spin for new projects!)
This is their website, by the way:http://www.uco.es/investiga/grupos/eatco/mapacti.html (their website is not very appealing, though :) Also, this is one of their projects: http://www.cpmti.tv/ I have a friend who was working with them at least until last autumn, when I knew of them at a conference about free software in Granada (with some nice RMS speeches). He worked on different projects, among them, a camera-screen recognition system.
If you happen to turn up, drop me a line! :) I’m ‘cooking’ a big project that will be running on free software (hopefully a great push for FOSS in the area too!) and I would love to meet you if you’re around.
Cheers!
Michael Terry is the guy who is doing InGIMP at the University of Waterloo. I met him at LGM 2007 and I’d he was a very nice guy (important for a potential advisor). It’s Canada, but we’ll still respect you ;)
http://hci.uwaterloo.ca/faculty/mterry/
Human Media Interaction group at University Twente might be interesting. It’s close to the gravitational center of KDE, so going to conferences etc is easy. The Netherlands has a government (parliament actually) demanding FOSS for all new government projects (unless there’s good reason not to). It’s close to Nijmegen where Ade and Sebas are doing their FOSS research too.
http://hmi.ewi.utwente.nl/
which collaborates with the Telematics Institute (telin.nl).
I do not know anyone there personally, but Twente in general is really nice to live.
Oregon State University would be a good place to inquire on this. Since its fairly close to Beaverton where our friend Linus now lives and works. Oregon State itself is extremely friendly to Open Source Software itself and I am pretty sure that will reflect in the Universities there.
–Shaun
The most interesting prof I know in usability is Dr. Robert Biddle. He doesn’t, as far as I know, have a specific open source flavour in his research, but he’s indicated interest in improving the usability of some open source packages in the past, so it might be worth contacting him:
http://hot.carleton.ca/hotlab/people/faculty-and-staff/robert-biddle
His graduate course is one of the most interesting CS courses I’ve ever taken, and he seems like he’d be quite the person to work with.
Carleton has other open source related activities such as their Open Source Boot Camp (http://www.osbootcamp.org/) so you might find the university is also very open so increased research in the area.
I’m not sure what they are up to these days, but everyone I’ve met from the University of Toronto’s “Project Open Source | Open Access” has been really awesome:
http://open.utoronto.ca/
I am doing CS at U of T as an undergrad and thoroughly enjoying it, though I can’t say much about the grad experience. And Toronto is a great city to live in!
-Leigh
Hello,
Maybe you should try with Eric Lecolinet (elc@enst.fr) who is researcher in IHM (http://www.infres.enst.fr/~elc/）
Emmanuel
Jeanna Mathews at Clarkson University in New York might be worth contacting>
jnm at clarkson dot edu
(http://people.clarkson.edu/~jnm/)
Jeanna Mathews at Clarkson University in New York might be worth contacting.
jnm at clarkson dot edu
(http://people.clarkson.edu/~jnm/)
Check out David Hakken (http://www.informatics.indiana.edu/research/profiles/dhakken.asp) at Indiana University. Probably not as well know as some of the others listed, but still interesting.
University of York has one of the leading research Computer Science department in the UK. They have been awarded the absolute maximum score in the last Research Assessment.
They have a HCI research group.
This is their web page:
http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/research/hci.htm
It is worth contacting them.
Best,
I’ll second Oregon State University. Like Shaun said, it’s very receptive to open source, and it also is home to the Open Source Lab (osuosl.org). When I went to school there I was more into the machine learning group, but I worked with people interested in HCI and OSS. Send an email to Margaret Burnett (about HCI) and Timothy Budd (about OSS at OSU). You can find their email addresses here: http://eecs.oregonstate.edu/people/faculty_staff_dir.html
If you are interested in the hardware/physical interaction aspect of interaction, you could look at HIT Lab NZ, based at the University of Canterbury, NZ. As it grew out of the engineering school, it may have a different focus than what you are looking for however. http://www.hitlabnz.org
Hmm it seems like their is many people that want you to attend “their” university. Personaly i think many things are nesssecary to take into acount when deciding. For one thing FOSS is now so wide spread that most developed countries and others have programs for both FOSS and HCI research etc. Inida gott bombay, China and Japan continue to develp in break neck pace as well as europe.
In my own contry Sweden you would find:
KTH-Royal Technical Institute Stockholm
S.U- Stockholm University
LTH- Lund Technical University the same as below 10 min awaY
M.H.- Malmö just a stone throw from Copenhagen in denmark witch is a big expansive region
Chalmers- Gothenburg Technical University
Higher edu of Kalmar linux program
Linköping University
In Denamrk both
Copenhagen and Århus got great shools as well.
Contact the swedish embassy the probably can help you if you cant google it.
The question is what you’re looking for.
A big University that hardly can manage all there students\researchers or a smaller that can be more listening to your needs. Bigger often can atract more money and buisnesses but that doesn’t mean that smaller ones can’t have world class competence and research.
Then you got living conditions, expencies and grants to take into acount as well as transportation etc.
But dont be shy to try something new and diffrent it might be a huge experince for life.
HI,
in Libresoft we study free / libre / open source software as a matter of research. Although we do not have anything specifically related to HIC or usability, we are involved in many research projects from the Framework Programme and with companies like Telefonica or Vodafone.
Have a look at
http://gsyc.es/~herraiz/work-at-libresoft.pdf
and if you are interested in doing research with us, write to the contact address in
http://libresoft.es
(I am not writing it here to avoid spam).
We are a research group in Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, based in Madrid, Spain.
Cheers,
Israel