In Brief

CRITO is pleased to welcome the following new staff members: Maureen Vasquez (pictured, right), Director of External Relations for the CRITO Consortium and Stella Ly (pictured, left), Assistant Financial Analyst.

Alladi Venkatesh has guest edited a special issue of The Information Society, “ICTs in Everyday Life.” The journal will be available in September/October 2006.

Alfred Kobsa organized a Workshop on Privacy-Enhanced Personalization at CHI 2006 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Montréal, Canada, April 22-23, 2006 (http://www.isr.uci.edu/pep06). The co-organizers included Ramnath K. Chellappa from the Goizueta Business School of Emory University, Atlanta, GA, and Sarah Spiekermann from the School of Business and Economics, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany.

Alladi Venkatesh attended a three day symposium, International Symposium on Intelligent Environments: Improving the Quality of Life in a Changing World, as a special invitee. The workshop, organized by Microsoft at their Cambridge University facilities in England, took place April 5-7, 2006. The topics ranged from a futuristic orientation (Robotics in Everyday Life, Future of Intelligent Devices, Cognitive Life of Things) to everyday experiences (entertainment, music, e-commerce, and health related matters).

CRITO Faculty Associates Sanjeev Dewan, Vidyanand Choudhary, Kenneth Kraemer, and Kevin Zhu attended IDC’s Directions 2006: Agenda for a Shrinking Globe: Seizing Opportunities in a Connected World conference in San Jose, California, March 7, 2006. IDC, a CRITO Consortium sponsor, generously provided admission for the faculty to attend the event.

Kenneth Kraemer attended the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Globalization II Research Network workshop, February 16-18, 2006 in Berkeley.

Paul Gray spent a week as a visiting professor at the City University of Hong Kong in January 2006.

Gloria Mark and Victor M. González's research project, "Increased Productivity or Burnout?," sponsored by the CRITO Consortium, was mentioned in the Time Magazine article “Help! I’ve Lost My Focus” by Claudia Wallis, January 16, 2006.

Paul Gray recently completed a 7-year term as editor of The Communications of the Association for Information Systems on January 1, 2006.