I am a post-doctoral fellow at the department of Informatics in the Donald Bren school of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. Since the start of this position, I have been working primarily with professor Paul Dourish. I have also collaborated with colleagues in other departments, such as Simon Cole from the department of Criminology here at UCI and with Drs Leysia Palen and Jeannette Sutton from CU Boulder.
Currently I am working on several different projects. You can get more information about my current and past projects on my research page. Broadly speaking, the main goal of my research is to understand how people adapt and integrate an increasingly diverse array of information and communication technologies into their daily lives. Specifically, I am interested in how people use such technologies to cope with adverse circumstances, to maintain their social relationships, and to navigate and interact in urban spaces. My research approach is highly interdisciplinary and I strongly believe in combining qualitative and quantitative methodologies with longitudinal research designs for a deeper understanding of human behavior.
I graduated from the Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in the summer of 2007 after successfully defending my dissertation, entitled "Residential Mobility, Technology and Social Ties." While at Carnegie Mellon, I had the privelege to work with my advisers, Robert Kraut and Sara Kiesler who taught me a great deal about this research business.
Prior to coming to Carnegie Mellon, I spent two years working for the Mammoth Mountain Ski & Snowboard Team as a ski-coach and as an administrator. Before spending two years skiing, I graduated from the University of Southern California with degrees in Psychology and Art History, Magna Cum Laude. While at USC, I worked with Stephen Read on an honors project that dealt with friendship formation in virtual reality text-based games (MUDs).
Though I am pretty "americanized", I was born and grew up in Almaty, Kazakhstan. My parents and I immigrated to California when I was 16 years old. A few months after we moved, Southern California was hit by the Northridge earthquake. Oddly enough, this was one of the more familiar sensations of the first few months here. I was quite used to earthquakes since they are common in Almaty. I went on to survive high school, figure out college and arrive eventually at this point in my life. Overall, I've been very lucky because I've somehow always managed to meet the most amazing people.
