PEOPLE

Faculty | PhD students | Affiliated

Tanja Belinda Andersen | Dan Witzner Hansen | John Paulin Hansen | Henrik Tomra Skovsgaard Hegner Jensen | Sune Alstrup Johansen | Anker Helms Jørgensen | Simeon Keates | Richard Ling| Javier San Agustin | Lone Malmborg | Søren Mørk Petersen | Tomas Sokoler | Gitte Bang Stald | Dag Svanæs | Martin Tall | Susana Tosca | Anna Vallgårda

Faculty

Anker Helms Jørgensen



Associate Professor in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) at the IT University of Copenhagen. His current research interest is the history of computer interfaces. Over the years, he has done research in computer games and HCI, aesthetics and HCI, methods and practice in interface design, mental workload in using computers, and the epistemology of HCI. In addition to having done research and taught HCI for several decades, he has worked as a systems developer and free-lance consultant.

He received his M.Sc. in computer science in 1977 and his Ph.D. in 1983 from Copenhagen University.

He has served as Head of Department at ITU and elsewhere and he has been Head of the the Design Communication, and Media study programme at ITU.

He has supervised eleven Ph.D. students, mainly in HCI, computer games, and media studies. He is a member of several review boards, among these the HCI-conference.

John Paulin Hansen (Head of Group)



John Paulin Hansen, head of the research group for Innovative Communication, is an Associate Professor at the IT University of Copenhagen. He received a MSc in 1984 and a PhD in 1992 both in Psychology from Institute of Psychology, University of Aarhus. His research areas are human factors, cognitive modelling and gaze-based interaction.

Susana Tosca


Susana is an Associate Professor and Head of the Design, Communication and Media Study Program. Her research interests include computer games, digital textuality and communication, hypertext, storytelling and popular culture. She has specially taught in the areas of digital culture and aesthetics, and her last book is “Understanding Video Games” published in 2008 by Routledge.

Dan Witzner Hansen

Dan Witzner Hansen, associate professor at the IT University of Copenhagen within the Innovative Communications Group (since 2008). His research interests are within image analysis and machine learning with a particular emphasis on robust and low-cost eye tracking and their applications. Within eye tracking, his interests spans gaze estimaton (fully, partially and uncalibrated setups), robust methods for image processing and noise tolerant gaze interaction. Within eye tracking research he is aiming towards “Mobile eye tracking in the wild”. A review paper on this topic is available in his publications. Generally he is interested in computer vision and machine learning for computer interaction research and applications.

Dan Witzner Hansen holds as Ms.C in Computer science and mathematics from University of Århus and a PhD from IT University, Copenhagen. He has been a visiting scolar at Cambridge University and post doc. at the Technical University of Denmark. He has been reviewer for several journals (e.g.International Journal of Computer Vision, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, IEEE Transaction on Biomedical engineering), program committees for international conferences and has been involved in initializing and co-organizing international research networks ( the IST EU Sixth framework programme “Communication by Gaze Interaction” (COGAIN)) and national research projects (Danvifo.dk)

Richard Ling

Rich Ling is a sociologist at the Telenor research institute located near Oslo, Norway and he is a professor at the IT University of Copenhagen. He has been the Pohs visiting professor of communication studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan and now he holds an adjunct position in that department. He is the author of the soon to be published book: New Tech, New Ties: How mobile communication is reshaping social cohesion (MIT). He is also the author of a book on the social consequences of mobile telephony entitled The Mobile Connection: The cell phone’s impact on society (Morgan Kaufmann) and along with Per E. Pederson the editor of the book Mobile Communications: Renegotiation of the Social Sphere (Springer). Along with Scott Campbell he is the editor of The Mobile Communication Research Series and he is an associate editor for The Information Society. as well as Norsk Medietidsskrift .

Rich Ling received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Colorado, Boulder in his native US. Upon completion of his doctorate, he taught at the University of Wyoming in Laramie before coming to Norway on a Marshall Foundation grant. Since that time he has worked at the Gruppen for Ressursstudier (The resource study group) and he has been a partner in a consulting firm, Ressurskonsult, which focused on studies of energy, technology and society. For the past thirteen years, he has worked at Telenor R&D and has been active in researching issues associated with new information communication technology and society with a particular focus on mobile telephony. He has led projects in Norway and participated in projects at the European level.

Tomas Sokoler

Tomas Sokoler is an associate professor with the INC group at the IT University of Copenhagen. His research takes place in the intersection between Pervasive computing and Interaction Design. As such his research in general aims to both define and explore the landscape of possibilities for humans to interact with digital technology as we continue to move beyond the patterns of interaction that we know from the traditional desktop computer. Tomas takes a design oriented and explorative approach to his research incorporating the actual construction of working prototypes/sketches. Hence, he loves tinkering with new combinations of hardware and software while trying to synthesize studies of domain of use , enabling technologies , and new ideas/ideals concerning the role of digital technology. For the last couple of years these general interests have been directed towards the design of digital technology for senior citizens. In particular, exploring how the integration of digital technology with mundane everyday activities can help bring forward openings for social interaction within groups of people aged 55 and above.

Tomas teaches the Interaction Design course on the DDK study line and is an active member of the PIT (Pervasive Interaction Technologies ) Lab at ITU.
He holds a PhD in interaction design and a MSc in computer science and physics.

Gitte Bang Stald

Gitte Stald is an assistant professor in The Innovative Communication Research Group at the IT University of Copenhagen since August 2007. Before that she worked at Film & Media Studies, Institute for Media, Cognition and Communication at the University of Copenhagen from 1994 to 2007.
Primary research areas are mobile media and social change, digital communication, and digital youth media cultures, digital media and globalisation. From around 2000 to 2006 she was also engaged in the growing games culture research environment with a specific interest in communication in and around online games and on fascination of death and violence in computer games.
She participated in the European comparative project Children and Their Changing Media Environment 1995-1998; in the research programme Global Media Cultures 1999-2001; in research – and development projects on mobile content for young Danes 2004-6; on mobile solutions for dyslexics 2006-7; on user driven mobile media communities 2008-9. She participates in EU Kids Online and in The MacArthur Foundation’s series on Youth, Digital Media and Learning. She has published articles i.e. on media and cultural globalisation, adolescents’ digital media cultures, and on mobile media. She is co-editor of Global Encounters: Media and Cultural Transformation (2002) and of Digital Aesthetics and Communication, Northern Lights vol 5, 2007.

Dag Svanæs


Dag Svanæs is guest Associate Professor in the Innovative Communication group. He received his Ph.D. in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) from Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim.

His research over the last 15 years has been in the fields of HCI and Interaction Design. His main focus has been on user-centered design methods and basic theory of interaction. A common theme is the importance of non-cognitive aspects of human-computer interaction - often called embodied interaction. At a practical level this involves a focus on the physical, bodily and social aspects of interaction. In his research he makes use of role play and low-fidelity prototyping in realistic settings to involve end-users in the design process. At NTNU in Trondheim he has built up a full-scale usability laboratory that allows for simulation of use scenarios with multiple users and multiple devices in realistic settings - primarily for the medical domain. This allows for evaluations and empirical studies of embodied interaction. The basic theory that most inspires his work is the phenomenology of the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. This was also the topic of his 2000 PhD. By starting out with the simple fact that we are in the world through our living bodies, and that perception requires action, Merleau-Ponty gets an epistemology that he find well suited for understanding embodied interaction. (He holds a tenured full professor position in HCI at NTNU. For more see: my home page.

Simeon Keates


Simeon is an Associate Professor in the Innovative Communication group. He obtained his PhD from the University of Cambridge on “Computer access for motion-impaired users” in 1997. After completing his PhD, Simeon founded and led the Usability and Inclusive Design Group in the Engineering Design Centre at Cambridge. He was appointed the Royal Mail Research Fellow. Simultaneously, he held a position as Supervisor of Studies at Fitzwilliam College, teaching both Mathematical Methods and Information Engineering. On leaving Cambridge in 2003, Simeon joined the Accessibility Research Group at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in New York and later worked as a designer and usability lead at ITA Software in Cambridge, MA. At ITA, he led the design and testing of the UI for Air Canada’s new airport Departure Control System. Simeon also founded the Cambridge Workshops on Universal Access and Assistive Technnology (CWUAAT) and chaired the ACM SIGACCESS ASSETS conference in 2006.

His research is focused on making products and computer applications more accessible and usable by as many people as possible. Specifically he is interested in methods and tools for helping designers and managers develop products that achieve this aim. To be genuinely effective, though, those methods and tools need to be based on good science and research. Thus his research interests are fcoused on: Design methodology - how things get designed; The role of the user in design - user participation, but also user representations, such as user models and simulations; Practical methods of inclusive design for industry - how to help industry adopt more inclusive practices; Designing for different user capabilities - motor, sensory and cognitive; Investigating novel interaction techniques and paradigms - including haptics, force feedback and multimodal input; and, Beyond the desktop - ambient intelligence, televisions, kiosks, mechatronics, robots, etc.

Simeon is a prolific author, with over 100 peer-reviewed publications, 3 edited books and 2 authored ones: “Countering design exclusion: An introduction to inclusive design” (co-author Jon Clarkson, published by Springer, 2003) and “Designing for accessibility: A business guide to countering design exclusion” (published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007). He is currently writing a new book - details to be released shortly.
Simeon currently teaches the Usability with Project course within the DDK line at the IT University.

PhD Students

Javier San Agustin



Javier San Agustin is a PhD student within the Innovative Communication group at the IT University of Copenhagen. His research is on low-cost gaze interaction, with a special emphasis on the development and performance evaluation of gaze trackers built from off-the-shelf components.

He is interested in gaze estimation techniques in uncalibrated scenarios (i.e. setups where the location of hardware components is unknown), in mobile gaze interaction on head-mounted displays, and in multimodal input by combining gaze pointing and EMG clicking. Javier’s research includes development of algorithms for eye tracking and gaze estimation using low-cost hardware components such as webcams and videocameras, and the evaluation of gaze-based interaction in tasks such as eye-typing and target-selection.

Javier holds a Telecommunication Engineering degree from the Public University of Navarra. After completing his MSc, he joined the Gaze Interaction Group at the same institution, where he contributed to the development of a new gaze tracking system for the Spanish company Iriscom. His work included the development of algorithms for fixation detection and gaze estimation.

Homepage: http://www.gazegroup.org

Sune Alstrup Johansen



Sune Alstrup Johansen is a PhD Fellow at the IT University of Copenhagen.

Sune Alstrup is doing research about eye-tracking as a method for analyzing Human-Computer Interaction and communication. Analysis of eye movements can help designers improve usability and performance of user interfaces, and within the marketing domain eye-tracking analysis can help optimize marketing communications.

He has several years of experience as a usability specialist working for Grey Global Group in the Communications industry, and BEC in the financial industry, and his educational background is a MSc in Information Technology.

Recently Sune received a grant from the world’s largest entrepreneurship foundation, Kauffman Foundation, which includes half a year abroad in the spring of 2008 with visits to some of the most interesting US universities, such as Stanford, and Harvard.

Sune is a board member at the local Danish SIGCHI chapter, Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction, and he has been one of the organizers of Interaction Design Day and World Usability Day in Demark.

Martin Tall

Martin Tall has been a Ph.D student at the IT University of Copenhagen within the Innovative Communications Group since August 2008. His primary research interest are state-of-the-art gaze interaction interfaces. Martins ambition is to seek new interaction methods, either unimodal relying on a single source of input, such as an eye tracker, or in combination with other modalities. Martin has an interest in Cognitive Science and sees great potential in interactive eye tracking applications due to the close mapping between our gaze position and attention. Furthermore, he is interested in usability and interface design and seeks to develop interfaces that are easy to learn and use for a wider range of users, some of which cannot operate traditional modalities (such as the keyboard or mouse). Martin also keeps track of what is going on in the domain of eye tracking/gaze interaction, both academic and in the commercial sector through his blog on gaze interaction.

Martin holds a M.Sc in Cognitive Science from Lund University in Sweden which resulted in the NeoVisus prototype interface for gaze interaction. Before that he went to spend a year at the University of California at San Diego, where he specialized in Cognitive Science with aspects of Neuroscience, Physiology and Computer Science. His B.Sc in Informatics is oriented around software design, development and distributed systems. In addition to academic studies Martin has a background as a software developer working with Internet-related technologies, networks and databases. For more information about Martin please visit his personal website.

Henrik Tomra Skovsgaard Hegner Jensen

Henrik Hegner Tomra Skovsgaard is a PhD student at Innovative Communication group at IT University of Copenhagen. His research is within noisy gaze and multimodal interaction. Henrik is developing methods for optimizing interfaces partly by spatially changes, partly by property changes of the visual interaction objects and in part by predictive modeling by examining the noise-imposed inputs from devices. Furthermore, he has a strong focus on usability and productivity and what communication needs cognitive handicapped and physically disabled people have that can take the above improvements into account.

Henrik holds a B.Sc in Information and Communication Technologies at Copenhagen University College of Engineering and a M.Sc Software Development at the IT University of Copenhagen. After his B.Sc he started working at RISØ, Metal Structures in 4 Dimensions in the department of Material Research, developing software for a synchrotron in Grenoble, France. During his M.Sc he was employed at IBM, Global Solutions and after his M.Sc he worked as a scientific assistant in Innovative Communication group continuing his work on his thesis and other projects.

Henrik is a member of the PhD study board and he is involved in teaching in the Multimedia course at ITU.

Tanja Belinda Andersen



Tanja Belinda Andersen is a PhD student at the IT University in Copenhagen, Denmark, under the supervision of Lone Malmborg. Her research is focused on designing technologies for seniors, focusing mainly on mobility and traveling. It is the intention of the research project to develop technological concepts that support mobility for seniors based on ethnographic empirical studies and participatory design methods. Tanja is associated with the
SPOPOS project in Copenhagen Airport, where she will be doing parts of her fieldwork.

Tanja holds a B.Sc. in Ethnography and Social Anthropology from the University of Aarhus. In 2005 she worked at the NGO ”Mobile Mini Circus for Children” based in Kabul, Afghanistan. She implemented creative teaching methods and developed a teachers’ guide that constituted basis for a range of workshops held for teachers throughout Afghanistan.

Throughout her M.Sc in Design, Communication and Media at the IT University, Copenhagen, Tanja has focused on interaction design drawing on her background as an ethnographer when making user oriented design. She has continuously sought to combine the ethnographic context awareness with innovative design methods in order to create concepts that meet the needs of the user and support the everyday life and values of the people for and with whom she is designing.

Furthermore Tanja has worked as a freelance ethnographer at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, in relation to the INDEX:AWARD 2007, where she contributed to the development of the articles; “Informed anecdotes 1: Insights Into an Ageing Society” and ”Informed anecdotes 2: Design for an ageing society”.

Additionally Tanja is a member of The PhD study board and is teaching on the course Interaction design.

Anna Vallgårda



Anna Vallgårda is a PhD student in the Innovative Communication research group. Currently, she is writing up her dissertation on Computational Composites–a study of the computer as a material for design. She holds a master in computer science and information psychology from University of Copenhagen.

For more information see: akav.dk

Affiliated

Søren Mørk Petersen



Sørens PhD research is about moblogging and social software. Moblogging is consider as part of the social software movement. Special attention will be given to how this new practice is integrated into everyday life and functions as an interpretation and representation of the mundane. His research will also look into the discourses and design practices surrounding social software, by focusing on the ideological character of the technology.

Søren is also interested in the emergent wificulture and how this new work and leisure practice is facilitated by social software, such as plazes.com.

His theoretical background is in Science, Technology and Society Studies and Cultural Studies and he holds a MA in Culture and Communication.

For more information have a look at 3tv.dk

Cynthia Haynes

Cynthia was affiliated with INC during her leave 2005/2006 from her position as Director of Rhetoric and Writing (and Associate Professor of Literary Studies) at The University of Texas at Dallas (from 1994). She holds a B.A. (German) and M.A. and Ph.D. (both in Humanities with concentrations in Rhetoric and Critical Theory) from the University of Texas at Arlington (1990 and 1994) where she also held the position of Writing Center Director. Haynes situates her research in the fields of rhetoric, composition, electronic pedagogy,virtual systems theory, feminist theory, critical theory, computer games studies, digital aesthetics, serious design, and the rhetoric of war and terrorism. With Jan Rune Holmevik she co-founded Lingua MOO at UTD in 1995.
Haynes is co-editor of the online journal, Pre/Text:Electra(Lite) and serves on the review boards of Game Studies Journal, as well as Games and Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media. Links to her teaching syllabi, vita, and publications may be found on her websites Haynes-UTD and Haynes-ITU.

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