Cameron A. Marlow

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

2001-2005, Ph.D. in Media Arts and Sciences, September 2005

During my four years as a Ph.D. student at the Media Laboratory, my research agenda shifted to the social nature of information. I became interested in the way in which information diffuses through informal social interactions, and the extent to which these local interactions can give rise to emergent media events. My research focused on the population of internet journals known as weblogs; thanks to the public nature of their discourse, and an explicit reference of social ties, it is possible to track information as it spreads from person to person.

My thesis aims to elucidate the role of weblogs in media contagion through a sociological study of this community in two parts: First, it addresses the issues of modeling the social structure of weblogs and the various media events that occur therein. Second, I test the extent to which these data are reflective of actual social processes through a general social survey of randomly selected authors. The models of the first section are validated through the collected answers and a description of the entire community is presented.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

1999-2001, M.S. in Media Arts and Sciences, July 2001

While a master's student in the Electronic Publishing Group at the Media Laboratory I investigated the relationship between language and conceptual representation, searching for linguistic tools to allow both machines and people to quickly and accurately represent large bodies of text. Coursework included aesthetics, social theory, artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology.

University of Chicago

1995-1999, B.S. in Computer Science, June 1999

Coursework focused on artificial intelligence and theoretical computer science within the context of the broad base of core requirements. Notable courses include advanced physics, social science theory, genetics, and immunology.

Yahoo! Research

2005-present, Research Scientist

Recently transitioned from the Search group to Human Social Dynamics. Current research bridges social network analysis, incentives, social search, and community systems for communities including Yahoo! Groups, del.icio.us, Flickr, and Yahoo! Messenger.

MIT Media Laboratory

1999-2005, Research Assistant

Design and implementation of prototype systems to further the research interests of the Electronic Publishing group. The focus of my work is self-directed experiment design and evaluation in the fields of social networks, information retrieval, and computer-human interaction. Other responsibilities include regular communication with Media Lab sponsors, grant proposal authorship, and mentoring of undergraduates researchers.

Centers for Disease Control

Summer 2003, ORISE Fellow, Department of STD Prevention

Exploratory research at the intersection of Internet communication, social networks and information diffusion. Designed surveillance systems to track online sex- and information-seeking behavior of populations at risk for sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Worked with various branches to help design and evaluate the effectiveness of various information campaigns.

The Lafayette Project

Summer 2002, Research and Development

Spent six weeks helping to shape the goals and directions of a small startup company in the domain of online publishing. The project consisted of exploring the space of social information aggregation and producing a working prototype for collecting and synthesizing large bodies of personal publications.

Northwestern University

1998-1999, Research Assistant

Designed and evaluated systems integrating information retrieval into task workflow; two systems, SingleSource, a document exchange system for consultants, and Stamping Advisor, a case-based design tool for automotive body engineering provided just-in-time information to inform task-specific decisions. Both systems were directed research projects with sponsoring corporations involving iterative design and evaluation for integrating with the embedded task context.

University of Chicago

Summer 1998, Research Assistant

During a summer internship with the Infolab, I was acclimated to the process of artificial intelligence research, which transitioned later into personal research into information retrieval and helping computer users obtain task-relevant information with appropriate timing.

"Upflux: An open index for weblogs." Workshop on the Weblogging Ecosystem: Aggregation, Analysis and Dynamics at the 13th International World Wide Web Conference, May 18, 2004.

"Virtual mobility." Oxford Internet Institute symposium, Community and mobility: living with the technologies of remote communication, October 2, 2003.