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Cecilia R. Aragon
Associate Professor, Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering
Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Information School
College of Engineering, eScience Institute
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195


Research Interests:
  • human-computer interaction
  • computer-supported cooperative work and cyberinfrastructure/eScience
  • software for scientific collaborations
  • collaborative creativity
  • visual analytics
  • usability and sustainability
  • eye tracking
  • collaborative games
  • emotion detection and analysis in text communication
Dr. Aragon is the director of the Scientific Collaboration and Creativity Lab at the University of Washington. Her current research focuses on computer-supported cooperative work, visual analytics, and creativity for scientific collaborations, including the socio-technical aspects of cyberinfrastructure and the role of socio-emotional content in online communication among technical collaborations. Her research group explores the detection and analysis of emotion in text communication and the use of computer gaming for collaborative science and engineering learning and discovery.

She was the architect for Sunfall, a collaborative visual analytics system for supernova astrophysics. She developed an augmented-reality visualization system for helicopter pilots that increased their ability to land safely during simulated hazardous conditions.

Her early work was in theoretical computer science. She was the co-inventor (with Raimund Seidel) of the treap, a binary search tree in which each node has both a key and a priority, and the randomized search tree, which uses random priorities in treaps to achieve good average-case performance. With Johnson, McGeoch, and Schevon, she conducted the first extensive evaluation of the simulated annealing algorithm in combinatorial optimization problems.

Education:
Ph.D., Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley, 2004;  Advisor: Prof. Marti Hearst
M.S., Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley
B.S. with Honors, Mathematics, California Institute of Technology

Teaching:
Winter 2013:   HCDE 411, Information Visualization
Winter 2013:   HCDE 496/596, Emotion in Text Communication
Winter 2013:   HCDE 496/596, Games for Good
Autumn 2012:   HCDE 496/596, Emotion in Text Communication
Autumn 2012:   HCDE 496/596, Games for Good
Spring 2012:   HCDE 511, Information Visualization
Spring 2012:   HCDE 496/596, Emotion in Text Communication
Winter 2012:   HCDE 511, Information Visualization
Winter 2012:   HCDE 496/596, Emotion in Text Communication
Autumn 2011:   HCDE 496/596, Emotion in Text Communication

Awards: In 2008, she won the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on outstanding scientists and engineers beginning their independent careers. She has won many other awards for her research, including five Best Paper awards since 2004. She was recently named one of the Top 25 Women of 2009 by Hispanic Business Magazine.

Publications: Over 50 peer-reviewed and 100 non-peer-reviewed publications in conferences and journals in the areas of computer-supported cooperative work, human-computer interaction, visualization, visual analytics, image processing, machine learning, and astrophysics. As of December 2012, her articles have been cited over 2,500 times (per Google Scholar).

Service: Dr. Aragon is also active in program service and supporting diversity in computing. She is a founding member of Latinas in Computing, was a board member of the Computing Research Association's Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W), a founding member of Berkeley Lab's Computing Sciences Diversity Working Group and Women in Science Council, the chair of the IEEE Computer Society's Entrepreneur and Pioneer Awards committee, and has served as a reviewer and program committee member for numerous computer science conferences.

 

Contact Info

Cecilia R. Aragon
Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering
University of Washington
407A Sieg Hall, Box 352315
Seattle, WA 98195
(206) 543-2567 (tel)
(206) 543-8858 (fax)


Affiliations and Projects:

Scientific Collaboration and Creativity Lab
Human Centered Design & Engineering, University of Washington
dub group, University of Washington
eScience Institute, University of Washington
Computer Science & Engineering, University of Washington
Electrical Engineering, University of Washington
Information School, University of Washington
Advanced Computing for Science, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
Visualization Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
Nearby Supernova Factory
NERSC Analytics
Deep Sky
Particle Data Group