Pardha S. Pyla
Curriculum Vitae
1153 Knowledgeworks II
2202 Kraft Drive
Virginia Tech (Mail code 0902)
Blacksburg, VA 24060
E-mail: ppyla [@] vt [.] edu
Web: http://people.cs.vt.edu/~ppyla
Phone: (540) 552 1072
Fax: (540) 231-6075
Education
Doctor of Philosophy, Computer Science, Virginia Tech - Blacksburg, VA (Dec 2007)
Advisor: Dr. Rex Hartson
Dissertation: Connecting the usability and software engineering life cycles through a communication-fostering software development framework and cross-pollinated computer science courses.
Graduate Certificate, Human-Computer Interaction, Virginia Tech - Blacksburg, VA (Dec 2006)
Master of Science, Computer Science, Virginia Tech - Blacksburg, VA (May 2006)
Master of Science, Computer Engineering, Virginia Tech - Blacksburg, VA (May 2002)
Bachelor of Technology, Electronics and Communication Engineering, Nagarjuna University, India (May 1999)
Areas of Interest, Specialization, and Competence
Human-computer interaction (HCI), multi-platform user interfaces, sustainability of electronic systems through design, interaction design, computer science education, development of interactive systems, usability engineering, software engineering, and connecting usability and software engineering life cycles.
Refereed Publications
Journal article
- Howarth, J., Pyla, P.S., Yost, B., Haciahmetoglu, Y., Young, D., Ball, R., Lambros, S. and Layne, P., Designing a conference for women entering academe in the sciences and engineering. Advancing Women in Leadership (AWL) Journal, 2007, 30 pages.[pdf]
Book chapter
- Pyla, P.S., Pérez-Quiñones, M.A., Arthur, J.D. and Hartson, H.R., Ripple: An event driven design representation framework for integrating usability and software engineering life cycles. In Seffah, A., Gulliksen, J. and Desmarais, M. eds. Human-centered Software Engineering: Integrating Usability in the Software Development Lifecycle, Springer, 2005, 245-265.
Conference publications
- Tungare, M., Pyla, P.S., Sampat, M., Pérez-Quiñones, M.A., Syncables: A Framework to Support Seamless Data Migration across Multiple Platforms; Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Portable Information Devices, IEEE Portables 2007, 2007, 1-5.[pdf]
- Pyla, P.S., Howarth, J.R., Catanzaro, C. and North, C., Vizability: A Tool for usability engineering process improvement through the visualization of usability problem data. Proc. of the 44th ACM Southeast Conference (ACMSE), 2006, 620-625.[pdf]
- Tungare, M., Pyla, P.S., Glina, V., Bafna, P., Zheng, W., Yu, X., Balli, U., and Harrison, S., Embodied data objects: Tangible Interfaces to Information Appliances. Proc. of the 44th ACM Southeast Conference (ACMSE), 2006, 359-364.[pdf]
- Pyla, P.S., Pérez-Quiñones, M.A., Arthur, J.D. and Hartson, H.R., What we should teach, but don't: Proposal for a cross pollinated HCI-SE curriculum. Proc. of the Frontiers in Education (FIE) Conference, 2004, S1H17-22.[pdf]
- Chen, J., Pyla, P.S. and Bowman, D.A., Testbed evaluation of navigation and text display techniques in an information-rich virtual environment. Proc. of the IEEE Virtual Reality, 2004, 181-188.[pdf]
- Bowman, D.A., North, C., Chen, J., Polys, N.F., Pyla, P.S., and Yilmaz, U., Information-rich virtual environment: Theory, tools, and research agenda. Proc. of the ACM Virtual Reality Software and Technology, Oct 2003, 81-90.[pdf]
Other publications
- Ball, R., Pyla, P.S. and Pérez-Quiñones, M.A. OSI and ET: Originating Source of Information and Evidence Traceability. Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '07), 2007, 2261-2266.[pdf]
- Pyla, P.S., Hartson, H.R., Arthur, J.D., Smith-Jackson, T.L. and Pérez-Quiñones, M.A. Evaluating Ripple: Experiences from a Cross Pollinated SE-UE Study. Proc. of the CHI 2007 Workshop on Increasing the Impact of Usability Work in Software Development, 2007,4 pages.[pdf]
- Tungare, M., Pyla, P.S., Miten, S. and Pérez-Quiñones, M.A. Defragmenting Information with the Syncables Framework. Proc. of the 2nd Invitational Workshop on Personal Information Management at SIGIR 2006, 2006, 4 pages.[pdf]
- Pyla, P.S., Tungare, M. and Pérez-Quiñones, M.A., Multiple user interfaces: Why consistency is not everything, and seamless task migration is key. Proc. of the CHI 06 Workshop on The Many Faces of Consistency in Cross-Platform Design, 2006, 55-60.[pdf]
- Pyla, P.S., Pérez-Quiñones, M.A., Arthur, J.D. and Hartson, H.R., Towards a model-based framework for integrating usability and software engineering life cycles. Proc. of the Interact 2003 Workshop on "Closing the Gaps: Software Engineering and Human Computer Interaction", 2003, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut d' Administration et de Gestion (IAG) on behalf of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), 67-74.[pdf]
Non-refereed Publications
- Tungare, M., Pyla, P.S., Perez-Quinones, M.A. and Harrison, S., Personal Information Ecosystems and Implications for Design. Technical Report arXiv:cs/0612081v1. Computing Research Repository (CoRR), Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2006.
- Perez-Quinones, M.A. Tungare, M., Pyla, P.S., and Kurdziolek, M., A Special Topics Course on Personal Information Management. Technical Report TR-06-26. Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech, 2006.
- Pyla, P.S., Tungare, M., Holman, J. and Pérez-Quiñones, M.A., Continuous UIs for seamless task migration in MPUIs: Bridging task-disconnects. Technical Report TR 04-24. Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech, 2004.
Manuscripts under review
- Modeling the Software and Usability Engineering Life Cycles to Create an Integrated Development Environment, under review with Transactions on Software Engineering.
Professional Awards and Honors
Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award , Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech, 2008
Recipient of Computing Research Association (CRA) Scholarship for CRA Academic Careers Workshop, 2008
Invited Student Commencement Speaker, Graduate Commencement Ceremony, Virginia Tech, 2007
Outstanding Doctoral Student, College of Engineering, Virginia Tech, 2007
Citizen Scholar Award, for scholarship in service to the community, Graduate School, Virginia Tech, 2007
Recipient of Graduate Research Development Project Award, Graduate Student Assembly, Virginia Tech, Fall 2006
First Place in Engineering, Interactive demo and poster presentation, Embodied data objects: Tangible Interfaces to Information Appliances, 22nd Annual Research Symposium and Exposition, Graduate School, Virginia Tech, 2006
Featured Graduate Student of the Month, Graduate School, Virginia Tech, March 2005
Dean's List for Outstanding Instructors/Teaching Excellence, College of Engineering, Virginia Tech, Summer 2004
Alpha Epsilon Lambda (AEL), Academic Excellence and Leadership Honor Society for Graduate and Professional Students
Upsilon Pi Epsilon (UPE), National Computer Science Honor Society
Professional and Academic Experience
Postdoctoral Associate Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech (Nov 2007 to present)
- Managing the NSF-funded Scholars of the Future program (see below)
- Teaching graduate-level Usability Engineering course
Instructor Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech
Usability Engineering graduate-level course (Spring 2008)
Human-Computer Interaction junior/senior-level undergraduate course (Summer 2004/2005)
- Preparing and lecturing on a wide range of topics
- Facilitating and leading in-class activities on various phases of usability engineering process
- Supervising semester-long group projects on developing user interfaces
- Administering and grading tests, projects, and assignments
Scholars of the Future Program Coordinator, Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech (Spring 2007 to present)
- Recruiting and mentoring 12 minority undergraduate students in Computer Science to encourage the pursuit of graduate studies
- Planning relevant activities for the scholars to enrich their undergraduate experience and prepare them for graduate school
Research Experience for Undergraduates Program Coordinator, Center for HCI, Virginia Tech (Summer 2006/2007)
- Organizing an eight-week NSF-funded program
- Recruiting and mentoring 24 undergraduate women and minorities from over a dozen universities in various aspects of HCI research
- Leading discussions and sometimes lecturing on a variety of topics in HCI
- Coordinating and instituting various activities including a final research symposium to ensure positive research experience
Usability Consultant, Meridium Inc. (independent software company), Roanoke, Virginia (Summer and Winter of 2006)
- Performing usability walkthroughs for Meridium’s suite of software systems
- Identifying usability problems and providing redesign solutions
- Introducing usability best practices and guidelines into the development life cycle
Graduate Research Assistant, Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech (Summer 2005)
- Research and design team for DCART (Usability Data Collection, Analysis, and Reporting Tool) project
- Designing tools to support usability engineering life cycle activities and products
- Creating a conceptual metaphor that uses multi-view visualization to make DCART system model intuitive
- Developing low-fidelity paper prototypes and conducted lab-based usability evaluations
Graduate Teaching Assistant, Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech
Assisting in teaching, grading assignments and tests, conducting in-class activities, and sometimes lecturing:
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Usability engineering – Graduate course (Spring 2003/2004, Fall 2004/2006)
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Human-computer interaction – Junior/senior course (Summer 2003, Fall 2003/2005, Spring 2006)
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Graphical user interfaces – Special study senior-level course (Spring 2005)
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User interface software – Special study graduate course (Fall 2002)
Graduate Research Assistant, Department of Chemistry, Virginia Tech (June 2001 – May 2002)
- Developing web-based and standalone applications in Java for data mining, analyzing, and recording patterns in sets of torsion angles of protein structures
- Gathering and analyzing requirements, designing, implementing, and deploying the applications designed for chemistry researchers
Research Assistant, Department of Architecture, Virginia Tech (Mar 2001 – Aug 2002)
- Duties involved simulation and optimization of structural data from architecture designs
Selected Projects
Supporting group decision making in affinity diagramming activities using software tools: Currently part of a team researching the core phenomena that influence consensus building and collaborative work
- Conducted four observational studies of participants creating affinity diagrams
- Identified three candidate ideas for tools supporting group decision making: shared awareness, cognitive offloading, and understanding, organizing and searching
Continuous User Interfaces (CUIs) for multi-platform user interaction: Currently part of three-member research team addressing the problem of task-disconnect that users face when migrating a task from one platform to another
- Defined task-disconnects (break in continuity that occurs when a user attempts to accomplish a task using more than one computing device) and introduced the concept of CUIs
- Developed a software framework to bridge this task-disconnect, enabling users to seamlessly transition their tasks among different devices
Embodied data objects for tangible interfaces to information appliances: Researched alternative and novel interaction paradigms to mitigate the increasing complexity of computing devices and platforms
- Applied the notion of using tangible everyday objects as embodied representations of active digital media
- Prototyped two service-oriented information appliances (printer and presentation projector) which provide specific “computing” services as dictated by context of interaction
- Designed a framework to support more types of services with little changes to existing setup
Visualization of usability data/metrics for usability process improvement: Started and led a research group that designed and developed Visability, a tool for visualizing usability problem data
- Tool provided problem trends, what-if analysis capability, aggregate analysis, and ability to view recurring issues within usability engineering life cycle
- Advised and mentored a graduate student who extended this project as his master’s thesis
Conference design for NSF’s AdvanceVT project: Was part of six-member research group to design a conference for women entering academe in the sciences and engineering
- Conducted extensive literature review on learning theories, human cognition, gender bias, etc.
- Conducted interviews and focus groups with women and faculty members in academe to determine problems and potential solutions for increasing female representation in sciences and engineering
- Introduced the idea of a “Social Affordance” and created four design heuristics grounded in human information processing theory for use by future conference designers
Navigation assistant on a PDA: Led a group of four graduate students in the design of a PDA-based application to facilitate independent and easy navigation for new visitors to Squires Student Center at Virginia Tech
- Analyzed the effectiveness of text vs. graphic modes for providing directions
Professional Service
Invited Colloquium Speaker, Department of Computing Sciences, Villanova University, March 2008
Invited Panelist, Workshop on Undergraduate Research in Computing: Building Diversity in the Computer Science Research Pipeline, in the Richard Tapia: Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference, 2007
Organizer, Workshop on Undergraduate Research Experiences, in the Richard Tapia: Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference, 2007
Technical Reviewer
- Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2007)
- Frontiers in Education (FIE 2006 and 2007)
- Software Quality Journal (2006)
- 2nd Latin American Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (2005)
University Service
Invited Speaker at the Graduate Recruitment Weekend Conclusion Dinner, College of Engineering, Virginia Tech, 2008
Member, Graduate Student of the Year Selection Committee, Graduate School, Virginia Tech, 2007
Graduate Student Representative to the Faculty, Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech, 2004
Secretary of the Interior (managing graduate student logistical resources), Graduate Council, Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech, 2004/2005
Computer Science Graduate Representative to the Graduate Student Assembly, Virginia Tech, 2004-2007
Graduate Council Mentor to new graduate students, Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech, 2004
Extracurricular Activities and Awards
Best In Show and Crowd Favorite, Creative Design Contest, Graduate School, Virginia Tech, 2007
First Place, Photography Category, Graduate Life Center Art and Photography Contest, Graduate School, Virginia Tech, Fall 2007
First Place, Photography Category, Graduate Life Center Art and Photography Contest, Graduate School, Virginia Tech, Fall 2006
Professional Memberships
ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (ACM SIGCHI)
Usability Professionals’ Association