Welcome to my web site. I am currently an assistant professor in HCI at Carnegie Mellon. My research focuses on understanding and improving distributed and individual cognition.

My research on distributed cognition examines how groups of people can collaborate to process information on a scale that exceeds individual cognitive capabilities. For example, I am investigating how large social collaborative knowledge systems such as Wikipedia and del.icio.us function and can be made more effective. I am also a collaborator on the Cognitive Atlas project, whose goal is to build a knowledge base of mental processes, tasks, and brain systems using principles of distributed cognition.

My research in cognitive psychology seeks to understand cognitive processes in the individual which underlie categorization and memory by combining empirical studies with computational and statistical modeling. I am also involved in developing interfaces which improve the efficiency of storing and retrieving knowledge and support visualization and interaction with large knowledge spaces.

Before entering graduate school I spent four years in internet consulting, first as a senior programmer and then as a senior information architect. I continue to consult for Fortune 500 companies with difficult information and interaction problems. In addition I do freelance graphic design, especially focusing on logo design. I am also an avid photographer.