Keywords

  • collaboration technology
  • computer mediated communication
  • computer supported cooperative work
  • human computer interaction

Birnholtz, Jeremy P.

Assistant Professor
I am an assistant professor in the Department of Communication and the Faculty of Computing and Information Science. My research and teaching interests lie in the area of collaboration technologies for geographically distributed workgroups, and in the intersections of social science theory and technology design.

research

research and scholarship focus

My main interest lies in the area of improving and enabling novel forms of collaboration, with a particular focus on improving the capacity for informal interaction in geographically distributed workgroups. I aim to conduct research that is theoretically and empirically grounded in the social sciences, but also pushes the boundaries of what is possible with current technologies. In doing so, I draw directly on the areas of social and cognitive psychology, information science, and organizational behavior. I also collaborate extensively with computer scientists. My research is currently focused on understanding processes of interpersonal attention as they are manifested in face-to-face settings, and using this understanding to design and test novel technologies for distributed groups. These issues are fundamental to people’s ability to work effectively in “virtual” teams and organizations, which are increasingly common in many organizational settings.

affiliations

faculty appointment in

member of graduate field

other Cornell affiliations

teaching

teaches

background

educational background

    • MS, Information.  University of Michigan, 2001.
    • Ph. D., School of Information. University of Michigan, 2005.
    • B.S., Radio/TV/Film. Northwestern University, 1996.

professional background

  • Postdoctoral fellow, Knowledge Media Design Institute, University of Toronto, 2005-07.

publications

talks and presentations

    • Birnholtz, J. and Bietz, M. (2003) “Data at Work: Supporting Sharing in Science and Engineering,” Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Supporting Group Work, Sanibel Island, FL, November 9 – 12, pp. 339-348 (30% acceptance rate).
    • Birnholtz, J., Gutwin, C., Hawkey, K. (2007) “Privacy in the Open: How Attention Mediates Awareness and Privacy in Open-Plan Offices,” to appear in the Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Supporting Group Work (GROUP 07), November 4 - 7, Sanibel Island, FL.
    • Ranjan, A., Birnholtz, J.P., Balakrishnan, R. (2006) “An Exploratory Analysis of Partner Action and Camera Control in a Video-Mediated Collaborative Task,” Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, November 4-8, Banff, Alberta, pp. 403-412 .
    • Birnholtz, J.P., Grossman, T., Mak, C., Balakrishnan, R. (2007) “An Exploratory Study of Input Configuration and Group Process in a Negotiation Task Using a Large Display,” Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 07), April 28 – May 3, San Jose, CA, pp. 91-100 .
    • Ranjan, A., Birnholtz, J.P., Balakrishnan, R. (2007) “Dynamic Shared Visual Spaces: Experimenting with Automatic Camera Control in a Remote Repair Task,” Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 07), April 28 – May 3, San Jose, CA, pp. 1177-1186 .
    • Birnholtz, J.P., Finholt, T.A., Horn, D.B., Bae, S.J. (2005) “Grounding Needs: Achieving Common Ground Via Lightweight Chat in Large, Distributed, Ad-Hoc Groups,” Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2005), April 2-7, Portland, OR, pp. 21-30 (25% acceptance rate).
Keywords: collaboration technology, computer mediated communication, computer supported cooperative work, human computer interaction