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Justine Cassell, Director
Room 3-320, Ford Building
2133 Sheridan Road
Evanston, IL 60201
phone: 847-491-3534
email: justine@northwestern.edu
Program Description
The combined Ph.D. in Communication and Computer Science, known as the Ph.D. in Technology and Social Behavior (TSB), is the first combined Ph.D. in two distinct fields to be offered at Northwestern. The TSB program draws on Northwestern’s strong support for interdisciplinary study, benefits from talented faculty who contribute to a tradition of collaboration, and attracts unique students who are eager for academic experiences that cross school and department boundaries. The combined degree benefits students by providing training in social science methods to study human behavior and computer technology, experience designing and implementing new technologies, practice incorporating the results of empirical research into these technologies, and preparation for the widest range of academic and industrial jobs.
The study of Technology and Social Behavior involves many disciplines, but until now it has been rare to find graduate training that prepares students to bridge several of those disciplines in the way that is demanded by both academic and industry research jobs of today. The Northwestern TSB doctoral program recruits students from a variety of backgrounds and gives them rigorous training in humanities, social sciences, human-computer interaction and computer science methodologies to allow them to understand and participate in technological developments in their broadest possible contexts.
The curriculum for the joint degree program is rigorous, as it combines requirements from the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Ph.D. program in the School of Engineering and from the Media, Technology & Society (MTS) Ph.D. program in the School of Communication.
The combined degree benefits students by providing training in multiple methodologies to study human behavior and computer technology; experience designing and implementing new technologies; practice incorporating the results of empirical research into these technologies; and preparation for the widest range of academic and industrial jobs.
Students in the TSB doctoral program have the opportunity to spend summers carrying out research on the Evanston campus, or to do internships in industry research labs such as IBM, Google, MITRE and Microsoft.
On the job market, the TSB joint degree in Computer Science and Communication will give students strong credentials for jobs in both academia and industry. In academia, our graduates make strong candidates for jobs in both traditional and emerging departments such as: Information Technology, Library and Information Sciences, Information Systems (or Informatics), New Media, Communications, Computer Science, Learning Sciences, and Cognitive Science departments. While interdisciplinary research is fundamental to discovery and progress, evaluating this research from traditional perspectives can be problematic. The joint degree prepares graduates with the authority to communicate about their research within multiple disciplines.
Examples of TSB Research
Ph.D. students can join faculty from across the Northwestern campus in the study of phenomena as timely and innovative as:
- The digital divide from sociological, policy, and engineering perspectives.
- Interactive technologies for children, and understanding their effects on children's development.
- History of information and communication technologies.
- Automobiles that sense the environment and communicate with their drivers, without alarming them.
- Trust development in computer-mediated communication environments.
- Technologies to support distance collaboration.
- Cellphones that can "name that tune".
- Psychology of virtual humans.
- Non-player characters in MMRPGs that gossip.
- The effects of digital technology on libraries, newspapers and other providers and purveyors of printed matter.
- Self-generating music videos.
- Technology use in global perspective.
- Language and behavior in on-line communities.
- Moral panic surrounding girls on-line.
- Genre and interactivity in videogames.
- On-line Youth leadership.
- Mind and Society in the information age.
Core Faculty
The faculty in the TSB program come from the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) in the McCormick School of Engineering, and from the Media, Technology & Society (MTS) Program in the School of Communication. We also have strong ties with a number of other schools and departments around Northwestern University. These include the departments of Art History, History, Linguistics, Psychology, Sociology, Mechanical Engineering, the Kellog School of Management, the Law School, Learning Sciences in the School of Education and Social Policy, the School of Music, Mechanical Engineering, and the Medill School of Journalism.
Larry Birnbaum
(PhD, Yale, Computer Science)
Pablo Boczkowski
(PhD, Cornell University, Science and Technology Studies)
Justine Cassell
(PhD, University of Chicago, Linguistics and Psychology)
Ken Forbus
(PhD, MIT, EECS)
Darren Gergle
(PhD, Carnegie Mellon University, Human-Computer Interaction)
Kris Hammond
(PhD, Yale, Computer Science)
Eszter Hargittai
(PhD, Princeton, Sociology)
Ian Horswill
(PhD, MIT, Computer Science)
Jen Light
(PhD, Harvard, History of Science)
Don Norman
(PhD, University of Pennsylvania, Psychology)
Barbara O'Keefe
(PhD, University of Illinois, Speech Communication)
Bryan Pardo
(PhD, University of Michigan, Computer Science and Engineering)
James Schwoch
(PhD, Northwestern University, Radio/TV/Film)
Last updated: Jan 23 2008 11:46AM
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