New directions 2019

The fourth annual “New Directions in Research on the Psychology of Technology” conference will be held at the UVA Darden Sands Family Grounds outside Washington, D.C. on November 8-9, and is co-sponsored by the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business and the Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

CONFERENCE ORGANIZERS
Roshni Raveendhran, University of Virginia, Darden School of Business
Kostadin Kushlev, Georgetown University
Tara Behrend, George Washington University

HOTEL ACCOMMODATIONS
A block of rooms has been reserved at the Le Meridian Arlington. It’s a four-star hotel and just a short walking distance to the UVA Darden Sands Family Grounds. A link to the hotel block can be found here.

APPLICATION
Due to space limitations, the conference is invitation only. If you are interested in attending and/or presenting a poster or a data blitz (brief) talk, please indicate your interesting using the following link. You can submit your talk or poster by May 30 HERE. We will review all applications by June 30.

Speakers

VIKRUM AIYER, VP, PUBLIC POLICY & STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS AT POSTMATES
Vikrum Aiyer is the Vice President of Global Public Policy & Strategic Communications for the on-demand technology platform, Postmates. As Postmates creates new opportunities for brick & mortar businesses to distribute their products in the era of e-commerce, it is also shaping the way independent workers and automation is shaping the labor market. Aiyer leads the legislative and regulatory policy discussions at the federal, state, and local levels which impacts the Future of Work in the gig-economy. In this role, he also helps oversee the company's social impact & corporate social responsibility arm, Postmates Civic Labs.

CYNTHIA BREAZEAL, MIT MEDIA LAB
Cynthia Breazeal is an associate professor of media arts and sciences at MIT, where she founded and directs the Personal Robots group at the Media Lab. She is Associate Director for the Bridge: MIT Quest for Intelligence where she leads strategic initiatives in areas such a democratizing AI through K-12 and vocational education. She also founded the consumer social robotics company, Jibo, Inc., where she served as Chief Scientist and Chief Experience Officer. Her seminal book,Designing Sociable Robots, is recognized as a landmark in launching the field of Social Robotics and Human-Robot Interaction. She is an international award-winning innovator, designer, and entrepreneur. She has spoken at prominent venues such as TED, the World Economic Forum, the UN, SXSW, CES, and she has keynoted at numerous top academic conferences.

INGRID ERICKSON, SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
Ingrid Erickson examines the ways in which mobile devices and ubiquitous digital infrastructures are influencing how people communicate with one another, navigate and inhabit spaces, and engage in new types of sociotechnical practices. Erickson’s work places her at the nexus of three disciplinary communities: organizational studies, information science & human-centered computing, and science and technology studies. She is a faculty member at the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University and received her Ph.D. from Stanford University’s Center for Work, Technology and Organization in the Department of Management Science and Engineering.

JASON FARMAN, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
Jason Farman is an Associate Professor at University of Maryland, College Park in the Department of American Studies and the Director of the Design Cultures & Creativity Program. He is also a faculty member with the Human-Computer Interaction Lab. He is author of the books Delayed Response: The Art of Waiting from the Ancient to the Instant World (Yale University Press, 2018) and Mobile Interface Theory: Embodied Space and Locative Media (Routledge, 2012 — winner of the 2012 Book of the Year Award from the Association of Internet Researchers). He is the editor of The Mobile Story: Narrative Practices with Locative Technologies (Routledge Press, 2014) and Foundations of Mobile Media Studies: Essential Texts on the Formation of a Field (Routledge Press, 2016). He has published scholarly articles on such topics as mobile technologies, digital maps and cultural geography, locative and site-specific art, video games, digital storytelling, performance art, social media, and surveillance. He received his Ph.D. in Performance Studies and Digital Media from the University of California, Los Angeles.

DONNA HOFFMAN, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
Donna L. Hoffman is the Louis Rosenfeld Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Marketing, and Co-Director of the Center for the Connected Consumer at The George Washington School of Business in Washington, D.C. Her current research is focused on using conceptual, empirical and computational approaches to understand consumer experience with AI. Her work has been published in the field’s top journals and enjoys wide impact with nearly 28,000 Google scholar citations. Professor Hoffman has been awarded many of the field’s most prestigious awards, including being named a Fellow of the Society for Consumer Psychology, the Robert B. Clarke Educator of the Year Award from the DMEF, the Sheth Foundation/Journal of Marketing Award for long-term contributions to the discipline of marketing, the Stellner Distinguished Scholar Award from the University of Illinois, the William O’Dell/Journal of Marketing Research Award for long-term research impact, and others. Her PhD is from the L.L. Thurstone Psychometric Laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and she was a faculty member at Columbia University, the University of Texas, Vanderbilt University and the University of California before joining George Washington University. She has also spent sabbatical visits at UCLA, Stanford, USC, and UCSD. She was named a Distinguished Graduate Alumnus of UNC in 2002.

LESLIE JOHN, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Leslie John is an Associate Professor of Business Administration in the Negotiation, Organizations, and Markets unit at Harvard University. Professor John’s research centers on how consumers’ behavior and lives are influenced by their interaction with firms and with public policy. Her work has been published in academic journals including the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Social Psychological and Personality Science, and The Journal of the American Medical Association. It has also received media attention from outlets such as The New York Times, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Time magazine. Professor John holds a Ph.D. in behavioral decision research from Carnegie Mellon University, where she also earned an M.Sc. in psychology and behavioral decision research. She completed her bachelor’s degree in psychology at the University of Waterloo.  

JUSTIN KINTZ, VP, HEAD OF GLOBAL PUBLIC POLICY AT UBER
Justin Kintz is VP and Head of Global Public Policy at Uber Technologies, Inc. Prior to joining Uber, Justin directed government affairs at Orbitz Worldwide, focusing on legislative and regulatory matters, corporate public relations, and corporate social responsibility. He previously worked at the European-American Business Council.

ARTHUR LUPIA, HEAD OF SOCIAL, BEHAVIORAL, AND ECONOMIC SCIENCE, NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
Arthur Lupia serves as Head of the National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE), which supports fundamental research in behavioral, cognitive, social and economic sciences. Lupia has more than 25 years of leadership and management experience in the social sciences community. Since 2006, he has served as the Hal R. Varian Collegiate Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan. He serves concurrently as chairman of the board for the Center for Open Science and as the chair of the National Academies Roundtable on the Communication and Use of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Lupia has also held leadership positions in numerous professional societies.

JOANNA MCGRENERE, UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
Joanna McGrenere is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and is an Inria & Université Paris Sud International Research Chair (France). Joanna received a PhD from the University of Toronto in 2002, an MSc from UBC in 1996, and a BSc from Western University in 1993, all in Computer Science. Her broad research area is Human Computer Interaction (HCI), with a specialization in interface personalization, universal usability, assistive technology, and computer supported cooperative work. Joanna is an elected Member of the College of New Scholars in the Royal Society of Canada (2017), won a Killam Research Award (2015), a Microsoft Research Software Engineering Innovation Foundation award (2013), a Killam award for Excellence in Mentoring (2012), an Outstanding Young Computer Science Research Award from the Canadian Association of Computer Science (2011), was appointed as a Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies Early Career Scholar (2010), and was the first recipient of the Anita Borg Early Career Scholar Award (2004).  

DON MOORE, UC BERKELEY
Don Moore is the Lorraine Tyson Mitchell Chair in Leadership and Communication at Berkeley Haas. He received his PhD in Organization Behavior from Northwestern University. His research interests include overconfidence—including when people think they are better than they actually are, when people think they are better than others, and when they are too sure they know the truth. Understanding the psychological origins of overconfidence sheds light on its implications for human decisions, as well as for organizations and markets. Particularly, he is interested in when confidence contributes to performance and when it undermines it. This interest takes his research to many specific applied domains, including leadership, negotiation, and forecasting.

SENDHIL MULLAINATHAN, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
Sendhil Mullainathan is the Roman Family University Professor of Computation and Behavioral Science at Chicago Booth. His current research uses machine learning to understand complex problems in human behavior, social policy, and especially medicine, where computational techniques have the potential to uncover biomedical insights from large-scale health data. He currently teaches a course on Artificial Intelligence.Prior to joining Booth, Mullainathan was the Robert C. Waggoner Professor of Economics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, where he taught courses about machine learning and big data. is the Roman Family University Professor of Computation and Behavioral Science at Chicago Booth. His current research uses machine learning to understand complex problems in human behavior, social policy, and especially medicine, where computational techniques have the potential to uncover biomedical insights from large-scale health data. He currently teaches a course on Artificial Intelligence.Prior to joining Booth, Mullainathan was the Robert C. Waggoner Professor of Economics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, where he taught courses about machine learning and big data.

STEPHANIE NGUYEN, MIT MEDIA LAB

Stephanie Thien Hang Nguyen is a research scientist at MIT Media Lab focused on the intersections of data privacy, human-centered design, and technology policies that impact marginalized populations. She previously led user experience research and design for projects in healthcare with the National Institutes of Health’s million person genome project and Johns Hopkins’ Precision Medicine team. Stephanie was lead designer at the Departments of Education, State, and Health and Human Services at the United States Digital Service at The White House. Nguyen’s research and work topics include: 1) Understanding and improving the user experience process from data collection to meaning 2) Translating privacy rights and legislation into digital products and services to better serve the needs of citizens 3) Collaborating with policymakers, practitioners, and civil rights advocates to reimagine meaningful choice and control in sharing personal data. She received a Masters in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and a Bachelor of Arts in Digital Media Theory and Design at the University of Virginia. 

WENDY NILSEN, NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
Wendy Nilsen, Ph.D., is a Program Director for the Smart and Connected Health Program in the Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering at the National Science Foundation. Her work focuses on the intersection of technology and health. This includes a wide range of methods for data collection, data analytics and turning data to knowledge. Her interests span the areas of sensing, analytics, cyber-physical systems, information systems, big data and robotics, as they relate to health. More specifically, her efforts include: serving as co-chair of the Health Information Technology Research and Development community of practice of the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Program; the lead for the NSF/NIH Smart and Connected Health announcement; convening workshops to address methodology in mobile technology research; serving on numerous federal technology initiatives; and, leading training institutes. 

SUSAN PERSKY, ASSOCIATE INVESTIGATOR & HEAD OF IMMERSIVE VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT TESTING UNIT, NIH
Dr. Susan Persky is an associate investigator and head of the Immersive Virtual Environment Testing Unit where she directs the Immersive Virtual Environment Testing Area (IVETA) within in the Social and Behavioral Research Branch (SBRB), National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), NIH. She earned a B.A. in psychology for Northwestern University. She earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara where she studied at the Research Center for Virtual Environments and Behavior. After conducting postdoctoral research at Columbia University, she joined the SBRB, where she built the IVETA, an immersive VR-based experimental research lab within the SBRB, founded in 2006.

LORRANA SCARPIONI, CEO, BELIIVE
Lorrana Scarpioni is CEO of Beliive, the world's largest time exchange community. Using time as currency Beliive helps members and employees learn from each other while building a culture of inclusion and collaboration. At 25 years old, Scarpioni was honored with an invitation to become Global Agenda Council in Creative Economy from World Economic and was showcased by Forbes Magazine and BBC News. In addition, MIT Technology Review Innovators under 35 chose her as one of the 10 most innovative Brazilians. Along with a Bachelor's in Law and Public Relations, she studied Human Rights, History and political ideals in Portugal.

ALISON SNYDER, MANAGING EDITOR, AXIOS
Alison Snyder is Managing Editor at Axios. She is a writer and producer whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, Scientific American, The Scientist and The Lancet. Before joining Axios, she was an executive producer at The Washington Post where she oversaw the editorial team for Washington Post Live. She graduated from MIT with a degree in chemical engineering and studied botany at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand on a Fulbright scholarship.

RICHARD SLATCHER, UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA
Richard B. Slatcher is the Gail M. Williamson Distinguished Professor in the Behavior and Brain Sciences area of the Department of Psychology at the University of Georgia. He received his Ph.D. in Social and Personality Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to arriving at Wayne State, he completed a two-year NIMH post-doctoral fellowship in health psychology at UCLA. His Research explores the effects of peoples' close relationships on their health  and well-being from a social psychological perspective. His research has two main facets: basic research on close relationship processes--particularly intimacy processes of self-disclosure and partner responsiveness--and investigations of the links among close relationships, biological processes and physical health. An example of this research is the lab's current projects on the impact of people's smartphone use and social media engagement on their ability (or inability) to be responsive in their face-to-face relationships.

LYLE UNGAR, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
Dr. Lyle Ungar is a Professor of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania, where he also holds appointments in multiple departments in the Schools of Business, Medicine, Arts and Sciences, and Engineering and Applied Science. He has published over 300 articles, supervised two dozen Ph.D. students, and is co-inventor on ten patents. His current research focuses on developing scalable machine learning methods for data mining and text mining, including deep learning methods for natural language processing, and analysis of cell phone and social media to better understand the drivers of physical and mental well-being.

ADAM WAYTZ, NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
Adam Waytz is an Associate Professor of Management and Organizations. His research uses methods from social psychology and cognitive neuroscience to study the causes and consequences of perceiving mental states in other agents and to investigate processes related to social influence, social connection, meaning-making, and ethics. Professor Waytz's research has been published in leading journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Psychological Review. In recognition of his work, Professor Waytz received the 2008 and 2013 Theoretical Innovation Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the SAGE Foundation Young Scholar Award, and the International Social Cognition Network's Early Career Award. Professor Waytz received his BA in Psychology from Columbia University, his PhD in social psychology from the University of Chicago, and received a National Service Research Award from the National Institute of Health to complete a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard University. 

BATIA WIESENFELD, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
Batia Mishan Wiesenfeld is the Andre J. L. Koo Professor of Management at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business, New York University. She was the Chair of the Department of Management and Organizations from 2012 to 2018. She received her Ph.D. in Management and Organizational Behavior from the Columbia University Graduate School of Business. Her teaching and research interests focus on the management of organizational change. She has examined organizations in various industries (e.g., banking, technology, telecommunications, public utilities) undergoing downsizing, restructuring and reengineering programs, exploring how to maintain the productivity and commitment of remaining employees. She also studies virtual work and telecommuting initiatives, online communities and the careers of top executives and directors. She serves as a Senior Editor of the journal Organization Science.  

Schedule

Friday, November 8, 2019
Location: UVA Darden Sands Family Grounds – Rosslyn, VA
10:00 am - Registration and coffee

10:30-10:45 am - Welcome
10:45-11:30 pm - Cynthia Breazeal (MIT Media Lab)
11:30-12:15 pm - Lorrana Scarpioni (CEO, Beliive)
12:15-12:45 pm - Small Group Workshops

12:45-2:00 pm - Lunch

2:00-2:45 pm - Arthur (Skip) Lupia (NSF Director SBE) Making a Difference with the Support of NSF
2:45-3:45 pm - Industry Panel

Justin Kintz (VP, Head of Global Public Policy at Uber)

Vikrum Aiyer (VP of Public Policy & Strategic Communications at Postmates)

Stephanie Nguyen (Research Scientist, MIT Media Lab)

Moderated by Alison Snyder (Managing Editor, Axios)

3:45-4:00 pm - Break
4:00-5:00 pm - Small Group Workshops
5:00-6:15 pm - Happy Hour/Poster Session

6:30 pm - Conference Dinner

Saturday, November 9, 2019
8:00-8:30 am - Breakfast
8:45-9:00 am - Introduction
9:00-10:15 am - Session 1
Sendhil Mullainathan (University of Chicago)
Don Moore (UC Berkeley)
Batia Wiesenfeld (New York University)
10:15-10:45 am - Coffee Break
10:45-12:00 pm - Session 2

Susan Persky (NIH)

Jason Farman (University of Maryland)

Joanna McGrenere (University of British Columbia)

12:00-12:30 pm - Data Blitz
12:30-1:30 pm - Lunch
1:30-2:45 pm - Session 3

Ingrid Erickson (Syracuse University)

Donna Hoffman (George Washington University)

Rich Slatcher (University of Georgia)

2:45-3:00 pm - Wendy Nilsen (National Science Foundation)
3:00-3:30 pm - Coffee Break
3:30-4:45 pm - Session 4

Leslie John (Harvard University)

Adam Waytz (Northwestern University)

Lyle Ungar (University of Pennsylvania)

4:45-5:00 pm - Closing Remarks
5:00 pm - Dinner on your own in groups
7:00 pm - Social Event (Artechouse Lucid Motion exhibition). ARTECHOUSE opened June 2017 in Washington, DC as the first innovative art space dedicated to showcasing experiential and technology driven works by artists who are forerunners of the new age in the arts and technology.