Talk with HCI Pioneer Joseph A. Konstan, "Recommender Systems: Beyond Machine Learning"

If you haven't already done so, register now for the next free ACM TechTalk, "Recommender Systems: Beyond Machine Learning," presented on Tuesday, October 8 at 4:00 PM ET/1:00 PM PT by HCI Pioneer Joseph A. Konstan, Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Distinguished University Teaching Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota. Bart Knijnenburg, Assistant Professor in Human-Centered Computing at the Clemson University School of Computing, will moderate the questions and answers session following the talk.

Leave your comments and questions with our speaker now and any time before the live event on ACM's Discourse Page. And check out the page after the webcast for extended discussion with your peers in the computing community, as well as further resources on recommender systems and machine learning.

(If you'd like to attend but can't make it to the virtual event, you still need to register to receive a recording of the TechTalk when it becomes available.)

Note: You can stream this and all ACM TechTalks on your mobile device, including smartphones and tablets.

Recommender systems help users find items of interest and help websites and marketers select items to promote. Today's recommender systems incorporate sophisticated technology to model user preferences, model item properties, and leverage the experiences of a large community of users in the service of better recommendations. Yet all too often better recommendations—at least by traditional measures of accuracy and precision—fail to meet the goal of improving user experience. This talk will take a look at successes and failures in moving beyond basic machine learning approaches to recommender systems to emphasize factors tied to user behavior and experience. Along the way, we will explore approaches to combining human-centered evaluation with data mining and machine learning techniques.

Duration: 60 minutes (including audience Q&A)

Presenter:
Joseph A. Konstan, University of Minnesota; ACM Software System Award Recipient
Joseph A. Konstan is Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Distinguished University Teaching Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota where he also serves as Associate Dean for Research in the College of Science and Engineering. His research addresses a variety of human-computer interaction issues, including personalization (particularly through recommender systems), eliciting on-line participation, and designing computer systems to improve public health. He is probably best known for his work in collaborative filtering recommenders (the GroupLens project, work which won the ACM Software Systems Award and Seoul Test of Time Award). Dr. Konstan received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1993. He is a Fellow of the ACM, IEEE, and AAAS, and a member of the CHI Academy. Konstan is co-Chair of the ACM Publications Board, served as President of ACM SIGCHI and is a member of the ACM Council.

Moderator:
Bart Knijnenburg, Clemson University School of Computing
Bart Knijnenburg is an Assistant Professor in Human-Centered Computing at the Clemson University School of Computing where he co-directs the Humans and Technology lab. He holds a BS in Innovation Sciences and an MS in Human-Technology Interaction from the Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands, an MA in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University, and a PhD in Information and Computer Sciences from UC Irvine. Bart works on privacy decision-making and user-centric evaluation of adaptive systems. His research has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, and corporate sponsors.

Visit learning.acm.org/techtalks-archive for our full archive of past TechTalks.