I’m a PhD candidate of Information Science & Technology, at the iSchool at Drexel University, working under the supervision of Dr. Christopher C. Yang. My dissertation study strives to understand the user interaction patterns among an e-patient community on a health social media platform.

I’m also a Programmer Analyst Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, in the Health Outcomes research group. I help develop web applications to collect and maintain patient reported outcomes.

This online portfolio contains my academic and professional experiences on their respective pages, and samples of work.

My research interests center on the principle of user-centered design of social computing technologies, that the designer should be aware of the context of which the end product will be used. In my current line of research, I analyze online social settings to understand social structure and computer-mediated communication (CMC).  I study the intersection between e-patients, social media, human-computer interaction (usability), and data mining.  Measuring web behaviors (i.e. web analytics) helps inform the design of information and communication technologies, such as social media.

Currently, I’m exploring patterns of social support exchanges between e-patients in online health support groups across various text-based computer-mediated communication formats.  This research brings insights into user behavior across different text-based CMC formats, which can encourage communication across social media and thus improve success of online communities. Industry specific applications of this work include developing social support components for web intervention programs or strategies for viral marketing.