Karrie Karahalios advises me, and I am a member of her Social Spaces group. Before coming to UIUC, I worked as a computer scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Lab doing (social and computer) network analysis. Then I taught high school for two years, working on the South Side of Chicago as a member of Teach For America. In 2004, I worked for Fermilab building a collaboratory for high schools students to do real science.
In my spare time I enjoy the outdoors and appreciating (and sometimes making) music. I have loved bluegrass music most of my life. I grew up south of Chicago, and although most people do not understand why, I really enjoy the Midwest. And, I have a very cute puppy named Penny.
NEWS: It has been a good spring. CodeSaw got accepted as a full paper to Interact 2007. I passed my qualifying exams. I am attending CHI 2007 as a student volunteer along with Tony and Jake. I will also present a workshop paper at Shared Encounters. HCII 2007 recently accepted a paper I helped write. And my wife got hired as a full-time, tenure-track math instructor at Parkland College!