2014-2-5: Job: Summer Internship in Visual Analytics/Information Visualization, IBM Almaden Research Center, CA, US (DL: March1, 2014)

The User Systems and Experience Research (USER) group at IBM Research - Almaden in San Jose, California is accepting applications for interns for the summer of 2014. The USER group focuses on understanding and improving how people interact with technology (Human-Computer Interaction), and how people interact with people through the use of technology (Human- Computer-Human Interaction). We analyze existing practices, build novel, interactive technologies and systems, and study their impact on real users, often in the field. Our cross- disciplinary team is comprised of researchers and software engineers with backgrounds in computer science, psychology, social science, design, and user experience.

Our current research focuses are two-fold: (1) people modeling which involves using people- generated digital footprints, such as social media data, to derive a better understanding of individuals and groups, and (2) people engagement which involves understanding the context in which people interact with information and social systems and developing novel interaction metaphors and technologies. We apply our work to a wide variety to real-world scenarios, including improving collaboration within the enterprise, enhancing precision marketing, and facilitating real-time, individualized social media engagements. We seek interns with backgrounds in computer science, cognitive science, sociology, and design. Applicants should have a Bachelor’s degree and be enrolled in a Ph.D. program in Human-Computer Interaction, Computer Science, Information Science, Psychology, Sociology, Design, or Communications.

To apply for an internship, send an email to csjobs@us.ibm.com:

1. Subject-line "USER summer intern 2014 application"
2. Attach your CV, and
3. Include the following information in the body text of the email:

• A few keywords describing your current research and research area (e.g., IUI, CSCW, InfoVis, end-user-programming, experimental psychology).
• A few keywords describing your HCI research skills (e.g., strong programmer, quantitative data analysis, experimental design, visual design).
• A paragraph or two describing your interests, especially in the context of the recruiting areas listed below.
• The name and email address of your Ph.D. advisor.

Applications sent to csjobs@us.ibm.com will be considered for all USER research projects. If you know which project you are interested in, you are encouraged to send an email with the above information to the contact person for that individual project (listed below).

IBM is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.

USER Projects Recruiting Interns

(1) People analytics from social media to infer individual or group behaviors and attributes (e.g., emotional styles, attitude, leadership skills, trust, etc.) (opening: 2-3)

• Desired skills: programming, data mining, machine learning, linguistic analysis, psychology research, and/or social science research
• Contacts: Jilin Chen (jilinc@us.ibm.com), Tara Matthews (tlmatthe@us.ibm.com), Aditya Pal (apal@us.ibm.com), Jalal Mahmud (jumahmud@us.ibm.com)

(2) Hyper-personalized recommender systems: validate the use of personality traits for recommending products and services in the real world at scale. (opening: 1)

• Desired skills: strong development skills in building web-based systems and social media systems, research background/experience in recommender systems, human-computer interaction.
• Contacts: Eben Haber (ehaber@us.ibm.com)

(3) Personalized visual analytic systems: privacy preserving information presentations of a user’s emotional, cognitive and psychological traits, and personality-driven visual analytics (opening: 2)

• Desired skills: interactive visualization design, programming, visualization toolkits, and/or user studies to evaluate visualization systems
• Contacts: Huahai Yang (hyang@us.ibm.com), Liang Gou (lgou@us.ibm.com)

(4) Writer’s revision assistant: natural language generation for IBM Watson (opening: 1)

• Desired skills: natural language generation, linguistics, AI, and/or lisp programming
• Contact: Richard Gabriel (rpg@us.ibm.com)

(5) Watson is on my team: interacting, collaborating, and innovating with big data learning systems. (opening: 1)

• Desired skills: CSCW research, field or experimental study design, quantitative and qualitative data analysis, and/or prototyping.
• Contacts: Jilin Chen (jilinc@us.ibm.com), Tara Matthews (tlmatthe@us.ibm.com)

(6) Grassroots social media campaign generation: finding and recruiting individuals with common viewpoints and opinions to publish and spread their views more widely and with a consistent message (opening: 1)

* Desired skills: system development and programming, social media analysis, development of web applications (front & back-end), micro-task crowdsourcing platforms (such as MTurk, CrowdFlower, etc.)
* Contacts: Jilin Chen (jilinc@us.ibm.com), Jeff Nichols (jwnichols@us.ibm.com)