I am a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at Virginia Tech. My research interests are focused on Human Computer Interaction and my advisor in the department is Dr. Deborah Tatar.

I am currently working on two projects within the Computer Supported Collaborative Work/Learning (CSCW & CSCL) research areas. For the first, my intended doctoral dissertation, I have investigated the use and adoption of educational technologies through a series of in-depth case studies with middle school mathematics classrooms.  For the second, I developed and designed a system, called ThoughtSwap, to facilitate and encourage meaningful co-located discussions. So far, ThoughSwap has been used in middle school science classrooms and college level writing courses and the results from the first two rounds of design/evaluation will be presented at CSCW 2010.

I was fortunate enough to receive a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship which has supported my studies and research. I successfully passed my proposal defense in Spring 2009 and I expect to graduate in 2010.

Besides all that, I am an officer in the Association for Women in Computing. I enjoy swimming, hiking, gardening, painting, jogging, and recently became a triathlete.