About Me

I'm a final year Ph.D. student in Computer Science and Engineering from the GroupLens Research Lab . I am a User Experience (both Qualitative and Quantitative) Researcher and a Data Scientist. I am currently being advised by Prof. Joseph A. Konstan and Prof. Haiyi Zhu. Prior to joining GroupLens, I obtained my M.S. in Computer Science and Engineering from University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

Research Interests

Human Computer Interaction (HCI), Online User Engagement Analytics, Social Media Analytics, Improving Online User Experience, Groups/Collaboration, Personalization, Desigining better systems for users, Crowdsourcing

Current Research

Broadly speaking, my current work is aimed at advancing the theory and practice of social computing by building and understanding systems used by real people. More specifically, I apply concepts from social, behavioral, and organizational sciences to users in online communities in order to understand individual and group behaviors, design better systems for users, recommend items matching their preferences and devise strategies that increase their retention and motivate contributions in these systems. My PhD thesis is aimed at modeling newcomers and early user experience for improving user retention and activity in online communities.

News

• Dec 11, 2017: Excited to share that two of our papers got accepted to ACM CHI 2018 and one of them is nominated for Best Paper Honorable mention.
• Oct 09, 2017: Gave a talk on Newcomer Retention and Productivity in Online Communities to the User Experience Group at Samsung Research
• Oct 02, 2017: Gave a talk on Engineering the Newcomer Churn problem to the Artificial Intelligence Cluster at 3M.
• Sep 18, 2017: Gave a talk at Ameriprise Financial on Customer Experience Management.
• Sep 06, 2017: Our paper on Personality, User Preferences and Behavior in Recommender Systems got accepted for publication in Information Systems Frontiers.
• Apr 06, 2017: Our paper on Toward Health (Aware) Recommender Systems got accepted to ACM DH' 2017.
• Mar 22, 2017: Invited for a talk at IIITH.
• Nov 17, 2016: I gave a talk on Newcomer Retention in Online Communities at IBM Cambridge.
• Sep 17, 2016: Now presenting my work on Personality and Category Preferences in the "User in the Loop" session at RecSys'16 at Stratton Student Center, MIT.
• Sep 14, 2016: Heading off to RecSys'16 to present my work.
• Aug 22, 2016: I gave a talk on Social Engagement patterns of Github users at IBM T.J. Watson Research, Yorktown Heights, NY.
• Jul 18, 2016: I gave a talk on User Lifecycle, Retention, and Productivity in Online Communities at IBM T.J. Watson Research, Yorktown Heights, NY.
• Jul 15, 2016: Now presenting my paper on Personality and Newcomer Behavior at UMAP'16 in the "Recommender Systems" session.
• Jul 13, 2016: Got selected as a Student Volunteer at RecSys'16.
• Jul 12, 2016: Heading to Halifax, Canada for presenting at UMAP'16.
• Jun 14, 2016: My paper on Personality and Category Preferences in Recommender Systems got accepted to RecSys'16
• Jun 06, 2016: Began my internship on Social Engagement Analytics at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in the Cognitive Software Runtime Cycles Group under Evelyn Duesterwald
• Apr 15, 2016: My paper on Personality and Newcomer Behavior got accepted to UMAP'16!
• Apr 12, 2016: Work from my Master's thesis on End-of-life Decision Making tools for Cancer patients entering hospice got published in IJHCI. Yay!
• Mar 16, 2016: Received an opportunity to intern at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center on Social Engagement Analytics in New York.
• Mar 01, 2016: Now presenting my work on Newcomer Retention and Early Activity Diversity @ CSCW'16 in the "Newcomers in Peer Production" session!
• Feb 29, 2016: Heading to CSCW'16 to present my work on Newcomer Retention and Early Activity Diversity !
• Aug 17, 2015: My first first-author full paper on Newcomer Retention and Early Activity Diversity got accepted to CSCW 2016!
• Mar 18, 2015: Passed my Written Prelim Exam!
• Aug 04, 2013: Joined the GroupLens Research Lab to begin my research. Excited!
• May 14, 2013: Accepted into the Ph.D. program at the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of Minnesota

How to pronounce my name?

Raghav /Ra:ghuv/ : (R-aa-ghuv) The first a has the pronunciation as in arm,farm etc, gh has the pronunciation like the gh in big-house, ghav is pronounced as in the word how.

Karumur /Karumu:r/ : Kar has the pronunciation of Car, the first u rhymes with the u in put and mur rhymes with moor.

Connect to Me

You can reach out to me on LinkedIn here and I tweet here .

For a copy of my latest resume, please send an email to raghav at umn dot edu