Quentin (Gad) Jones' Home Page

Research Interests

My current research activities are primarily in the area of Social Computing / Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). I am particularly interested in how various social computing system designs can both enable and constrain interpersonal and group interactions, and how the use of such systems can lead to the expansion of social ties/capital. Gaining such an understanding should result in improved methods for using computer technology to enhance people's navigation of their social environment so that they can more easily engage in social activities of interest and coordinate with others. Exploring these questions drove my doctoral research, my time at AT&T Labs Research, and is the core theme of the SmartCampus research lab, which I founded with significant funding from the National Science Foundation. Current questions my research group is exploring include the design and potential impact of trustworthy ubiquitous social recommendation systems, either in the form of location-aware social matching systems or social-interaction-space recommendation systems.

Current Student Research Opportunities

Most of my ongoing research activities are carried out through the SmartCampus Lab which I direct. Further information should be available on the SmartCampus projects page. Three examples of currently active research areas/projects are:

  1. Synchronous Online Community Systems: We collected all 176 million postings to a medium sized Internet Relay Chat (IRC) network for a year and we are interested in using this data to understand how people really use such systems. Contact me directly for more information if you are interested in using this corpus for data or text mining research.
  2. We are exploring how to build an IRC chat channel recommendation system that helps with user navigation.
  3. GeoTemporal Social Matching: Through our SmartCampus deployment we are exploring how affinities identified through an analysis of individuals' location histories (geotemporal social matches) can be used to support the building and maintaining of proximate communities. Much of the work focuses on:

    • Understanding of how to capture and utilize geotemporal histories to identify social matches
    • Providing users with trustworthy face-to-face introduction tools

If you wish to see more project opportunities please take a good look at the SmartCampus Web.

External Funding

2005-2008 NSF IIS DST 0534520 $749,608. "Using GeoTemporal Social Matching to Support Community". PI: Jones Q., Co-PI: Borcea C., Co-PI: Hiltz S.R., and Co-PI: Amento B.

2005-2008 NSF CNS 0454081 $950,398 (NSF $791,998 / Required NJIT Match $158,400). CRI: 'SmartCampus' A Wireless Mobile Community System with People-To-People-To-Places Services. PI: Jones Q., Co-PI: Borcea C., and Co-PI: Hiltz S.R.

2007-2008 NSF IIS-HCC- 0749389 $106,323. "SGER: Synchronous Social-Interaction-Space Recommender Systems: Core Components Model Development and Assessment". PI: Jones Q.

2007 NSF IIS HCC - 0738424 $12,000. "REU Using GeoTemporal Social Matching to Support Community". PI: Jones Q.

2007-2008 NSF IIS ITR-CreativeIT 0714158 $198,598. "SGER Fostering Creativity in Ubiquitous Social Computing through Casual and Formal Interactions in Interdisciplinary Design Studios". PI: Jabi W., Co-PI: Jones Q., Co-PI: Borcea C., Co-PI: Passerini K., and Co-PI: Churchill E.

2005 NSF IIS DST 0543332 REU Supplement $12,000. "REU Mark This! - Operationalizing the Notion of 'Place' For Interactive Community Systems". PI: Jones Q.

2004-2005 Hewlett Packard Technology for Teaching Grant Initiative Higher Education grant ($69,591) SmartCampus. PI Jones Q., Co-PI Hiltz S.R., Co-PI Manikopoulos C., and Co-PI Tekinay S.

2003-2005 NSF DST IIS 0543332 and 0308018 $521,044 (NJIT $347,633 / UMN $173,411). "Collaborative Research: Mark This! - Operationalizing the Notion of 'Place' For Interactive Community Systems". PI (Lead investigator/writer of Collaborative proposal): Jones Q., Co-PI: Terveen L. (UMN lead of UMN site), and Co-PI: Whittaker S. (Univ. of Sheffield).