Charan Pushpanathan

I am a first-year Ph.D. student in Information Sciences at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign , where I am advised by Dr. Michael B. Twidale. My research interests lie at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction, CSCW, artificial intelligence, design research, and the learning sciences.

Here are the topics I have been researching and thinking about recently. I am particularly interested in:

1. Mental Models: A person's own understanding or picture of how something works in their mind (e.g., a task, a genre, or a system). For e.g., some people think that deleting an app from their phone also deletes their account, even though the account still exists online.
2. Sciences of Intelligence: The study of intelligence in all its forms. Sometimes, I feel that "intelligence" is too broad or vague a topic to discuss directly. However, the term does a lot of conceptual heavy lifting because studying intelligence often leads us to more concrete and productive questions about learning, thinking, problem-solving, and interaction.

Prior to doctoral studies at UIUC, I hold a master's degree in Informatics at College of Information Sciences and Technology at Pennsylvania State University (Main campus; university park), where I was advised by Dr. John M. Carroll at The Collaboration and Innovation Laboratory (CIL) group on HCI, synergies, CSCW and design research. Also I studied under Frank Ritter, Xialong Zhang, and Kenneth Huang.