{"id":339,"date":"2016-10-03T05:40:44","date_gmt":"2016-10-03T05:40:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/cis\/?page_id=339"},"modified":"2026-05-17T22:17:57","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T22:17:57","slug":"research-areas","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/cis\/research\/research-areas\/","title":{"rendered":"Research Areas"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Research areas<\/h1>\n\t\t
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Social Informatics<\/h3>\n
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Liz Davidson<\/a>\u00a0investigates blogging as discursive activity and critical analysis of technology discourse in general.<\/p>\n

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Rich Gazan<\/a>'s work addresses how people integrate diverse types of knowledge, both in social computing environments such as social question answering (social Q&A) communities, and in interdisciplinary scientific collaborations.<\/p>\n

Scott Robertson<\/a>'s research focuses on how social networks mediate political discourse, integrating HCI and social informatics issues to support civic affairs.<\/p>\n

Dan Suthers<\/a>\u00a0was the Principal Investigator of the\u00a0Traces<\/a> project, which was building a theoretical foundation for analysis, a data model, and software tools to trace out the movements, confluences, and transformations of people and ideas in online social networks.<\/p>\n

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Human Computer Interaction<\/h3>\n
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Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) has a broad interdisciplinary nature.\"\"<\/p>\n

Following CIS faculty members are working on HCI projects that also extend to other areas:<\/p>\n

Kim Binsted<\/a>\u00a0- Entertaining and Affective Intelligent Interfaces (principal investigator of\u00a0HI-SEAS<\/a> Project).<\/p>\n

Martha Crosby<\/a>\u00a0is currently researching different types of physiological measures used to assess the computer user\u2019s cognitive state. Recent work includes HCI applications of eye tracking and the pressures applied when using a computer mouse.<\/p>\n

Jason Leigh<\/a> is the head of\u00a0LAVA lab<\/a>, in which different visualization tools and technologies are being developed, including the virtual reality spaces such as Cyber CANOE (Collaborative Analytics Navigation and Observation Environment).<\/span><\/p>\n

Randy Minas<\/a>\u00a0is responsible for the\u00a0Hawaii Interdisciplinary Neurobehavioral and Technology Lab (HINTLab<\/a>), and the research that examines technological use\u00a0and\u00a0the positive or negative effects on humans.<\/p>\n

Brett Oppegaard<\/a> works in HCI areas related to media accessibility and ubiquitous computing, particularly focused on mobile technologies; he is the principal investigator on The UniDescription Project<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Scott Robertson<\/a>\u00a0- HCI issues in digital democracy, social computing and civic engagement (head of\u00a0HICHI<\/a>\u00a0lab);<\/p>\n

Dan Suthers<\/a>\u00a0- How representational affordances of interfaces affect collaboration (director of\u00a0LILIT<\/a>\u00a0lab).<\/p>\n

Bo Xiao<\/a> studies Internet technologies for electronic commerce to evaluate how to better design systems for effective use. She is also investigating the \u201cdark side\u201d of Internet use for fraud, cyberbullying, and similar.<\/p>\n

CIS faculty working in the Intelligent Agents & Human-Robot Interaction area are\u00a0Susanne Still<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Data Science<\/h3>\n
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Data Science is a\u00a0\"\"research area within CIS that involves using data-intensive methodologies across various scientific disciplines. This practice applies techniques that analyze and leverage large datasets to extract insights and advance research across different fields.<\/p>\n