About Me
In Fall 2013, I will be joining the iSchool at University of Maryland, College Park. Currently, I'm working in South Africa as a research consultant assessing the quality of service of broadband in Africa. In 2012, I completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Prof. W. Keith Edwards at Georgia Institute of Technology. I also received my Ph.D. in Human-Centered Computing from Georgia Institute of Technology where I was advised by Prof. Rebecca E. Grinter. Prior to joining Georgia Tech, I completed my MSc., BSc.(Hons), and BSc. in Computer Science at the University of Cape Town, South Africa (my beautiful home country).
During my graduate work, I was awarded an Intel Ph.D. fellowship, a Google Anita Borg fellowship and a Fulbright fellowship. I also completed several great internships at IBM Research, Hawthorne, Microsoft Research in Seattle, Microsoft Research in Cambridge, U.K., and with Microsoft Research on a special assigment in Cape Town, South Africa.
Research
My research is focused on empowering end-users with information about various infrastructure technologies. In particular, I study how users make sense of and use broadband connectivity in the developed and developing worlds. I also build systems to make "the invisible visible" to help users understand what is going on with these infrastructure technologies that they depend on in their everyday lives. Previously, I also conducted work in the area of sustainability and I continue to be interested in this area.
Keywords: home networking, broadband, Internet, international development, ICT4D, HCI4D