Amy Bruckman

Dr. Bruckman is a Professor at the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, and a member of the Graphics, Visualization, and Usability Center. She received her Ph.D. from the Epistemology and Learning Group at the MIT Media Lab in 1997, and her B.A. in physics from Harvard University in 1987. She does research on online communities and education, and is the founder of the Electronic Learning Communities (ELC) research group (http://www.cc.gatech.edu/elc).

Dr. Bruckman's research focuses on how to support peer production of content on the Internet. The goal is both the product and what can be learned through the process of creating and sharing content. She and her students begin by studying existing online communities. How do they work, and why? What design factors contribute to a site's success, and how can we extend our fundamental theories of the nature of online interaction?

Next, Bruckman identifies values to guide further design work. She puts a priority on the value of participation and helping people from diverse backgrounds to contribute to their full potential. Knowledge of existing practice and identified goals then guide the creation of new online tools and communities. Her aim is both to support existing practice, and transform it--making new kinds of online collaborative activities possible.

She founded the College's Undergraduate Research Opportunities in Computing (UROC) program (http://uroc.cc.gatech.edu), and is faculty lead for the campus-wide Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP, http://urop.gatech.edu). She is co-chair of the College of Computing's program in Web Science (http://web-science.cc.gatech.edu).

Dr. Bruckman's research is funded by a National Science Foundation CAREER Grant, as well as generous grants from IBM, Intel, Microsoft Research, and Ricoh Silicon Valley, and Yahoo!