I am a Ph.D. candidate at Northwestern University in the Media, Technology & Society Program and a member of the SONIC lab. (That’s me, filling out an online survey at the National Museum of Singapore.) I work with Professor Noshir Contractor and my research examines online friendship formation. I am interested in whether or not the network-level pressures that we know influence friendship selection in the offline world also influence friendship formation online, especially when the friends have never met face-to-face before. I am especially curious about how online friendship selection behaviors differ by age and how teenagers and adults orient differently towards online friendship. Currently, I am working on my dissertation, using data from the virtual world Second Life to compare how teenagers and adults form friendship networks there.

Prior to starting my Ph.D., I worked as a design researcher for Intel’s User Experience and User Centered Design groups. There, I conducted ethnographic research in a variety of countries and on several topics including mobile technology, pregnancy, aging, gaming, and small business practices. Prior to joining Intel, I earned my B.S. and M.S degrees in Communication and Information Science from Cornell University where I worked with Professor Geri Gay in the HCI Group.