Hi all—

Please forgive the potential spam to the change list.

My name is Ed Cutrell & I'm an HCI researcher at Microsoft Research. I will be spending the first 6 months of 2009 working in the MSR India lab in Bangalore primarily working with the TEM group. While there, I’ll be exploring some interesting opportunities in HCI research specifically looking at ICT for development (healthcare, education, etc.) and probably multilingual systems. I’ve got a few ideas for some projects I want to play with, but mostly I just want to go in with my eyes open to cherry pick a few good ideas. There's a wealth of opportunity for design & study there and I’m looking forward to exploring this. Most of my expertise is in evaluation and study of people and technology, but I’m also keenly interested design for resource- and literacy-constrained environments. You can see some great examples of the kinds of work the TEM group has done on their web page.

While I’m there I’d love to work with a couple of PhD research students who have an adventurous spirit and would be interested in exploring some cool HCI problems in India with me. In my mind, probably the single most important thing for working in India, is a willingness to drop preconceptions about what the CS/HCI community thinks are good problems and solutions; what’s needed is a mind open to the interesting problems that are there waiting to be solved. One important caveat: the pay scale for interning in India is significantly lower than interning in the US or Europe, though we will pay for transportation & housing. Still, I think there's a great deal to recommend the experience.

So, this is a call for PhD (possibly masters) students in HCI or an HCI-related field who would be interested in working in India this winter/spring. If you would be interested in this, please let me know and perhaps send along a CV. I look forward to hearing from you!

Thanks so much! 

  -ed

(cutrell@microsoft.com)