UCI Division Announces New Associate Director
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Dourish is an associate professor of Informatics in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences. As associate director, he will be responsible for developing the Calit² Irvine division's research agenda and helping to build collaborative, interdisciplinary research groups.
" My own research has always been conducted as a partnership among people from different disciplinary backgrounds and one of the most significant factors in my decision to come to UCI was the campus' strong commitment to interdisciplinary research," said Dourish. "This position with Calit² is a wonderful opportunity to take on challenges that require this sort of multi-perspective approach, and this is a great time to do it as the new building opens and the Institute enters a new phase of life at UCI."
Before coming to Irvine in 2000, Dourish was a senior member of research staff in the Computer Science Laboratory of Xerox PARC. He also has held research positions at Apple Computer and at Rank Xerox EuroPARC. He earned a Ph.D. in computer science from University College, London, and a B.Sc. (Hons) in artificial intelligence and computer science from the University of Edinburgh.
" I am pleased Paul has agreed to take on this new role in our division. His research experience in industry and academia enables him to see the value of Calit² as an organization that can capitalize on and amplify emerging multi-discipline research activities all over campus " said Albert Yee, Irvine division director.
In addition, Yee is pleased to point to the fact that the new associate director has research strengths to complement his own materials and devices expertise. Yee's research focuses on the physical and mechanical properties of polymers and soft materials, particularly on how they impact nanotechnology.
Dourish's primary research interests are in the areas of computer-supported cooperative work, human-computer interaction and ubiquitous computing. He is especially interested in the relationships between social scientific analysis and technological design. Recent research topics include flexible attribute-based group information repositories, visual techniques to aid people in assessing system security, phenomenological analyses of interaction with embodied computational devices, and conceptual frameworks for privacy in information environments.
" One of the areas where I think the Institute can really have something to offer is in the social and technical issues around privacy, surveillance and identity in new technological environments. Calit² researchers are exploring the design space of sensor networks, mobile and ubiquitous computing technologies, thus making privacy a natural topic -- and there are many people all over campus with these strongly related research agendas," added Dourish.
Despite his relatively short time at UCI, Dourish also has taken on a number of other roles on campus. He serves as an executive committee member of the Institute for Software Research (ISR); faculty associate of the Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations (CRITO); program faculty for the Arts Computation Engineering (ACE) graduate degree; faculty member of the UCI Game Culture and Technology Lab; and faculty affiliate of the Center for Unconventional Security Affairs (CUSA). He is also a member of the Working Group for Science and Technology Studies, and the Center for Organizational Research, as well as co-founder of the Laboratory for Ubiquitous Computing and Interaction.
In the coming years, Dourish says he would like to see Calit² externally gain "increasing visibility as a center for radical, interdisciplinary work." But in the coming months, his efforts as the Irvine division associate director will be focused internally as he works to develop "a self-sustaining research community a true community of scholars working on all aspects of telecommunications and information technology in the everyday world."