Curriculum Vitae

Last Updated September, 2023

Education

• PhD in Information Science and Technology | Pennsylvania State University | 2017 – 2023

• MS in Software Engineering (Integrated Undergraduate-Graduate Program) | VIT University, Chennai | 2011 – 2016

Publications

Conference Proceedings & Journal Papers

1. Gupta, S., & Carroll, J.M. (2023). Water Data Collaborative [manuscript under preparation].

2. Gupta, S., Kim, Jiyoon., Ya-Fang, Lin., & Carroll, J.M. (2023). Design Space Analysis of Citizen – Based Water Quality Monitoring Applications [manuscript under preparation].

3. Gupta, S., & Zubarev, D. (2023). XAI in Interdisciplinary Research: Case of Accelerated Material Discovery [manuscript under review at ACM GROUP 2025].

4. Carroll, J. M., Gui, F., Gupta, S., & Knearem, T. (2022). Playful Meaning-Making as Prosocial Fun. Future Internet, 14(10), 288.

5. Gupta, S., Jablonski, J., Tsai, C. H., & Carroll, J. M. (2022). Instagram of Rivers: Facilitating Distributed Collaboration in Hyperlocal Citizen Science. Proceedings of the ACM on Human- Computer Interaction, 6(CSCW1), 1-22.

6. Gupta, S., Tsai, Chun-Hua.,& Carroll, J.M. (2022). Not Another Day Zero: Design Hackathons for Community Based Water Quality Monitoring. arXiv preprint arXiv:2210.16381.

7. Gupta, S., Dhanorkar, S., & Carroll, J. (2021, June). Not in my Backyard!? Lessons from a Community Conflict. In C&T’21: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Communities & Technologies – Wicked Problems in the Age of Tech (pp. 234-244).

8. Carroll, J. M., Beck, J., Boyer, E. W., Dhanorkar, S., & Gupta, S. (2019). Empowering Community Water Data Stakeholders. Interacting with Computers, 31(3), 492-506.

9. Carroll, J. M., Beck, J., Dhanorkar, S., Binda, J., Gupta, S., & Zhu, H. (2018, May). Strengthening community data: towards pervasive participation. In Proceedings of the 19th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research: Governance in the Data Age (pp. 1-9).

10. Wang, X., Knearem, T., Gui, F., Gupta, S., Zhu, H., Williams, M., & Carroll, J. M. (2018, May). The Safety Net of Aging in Place: Understanding How Older Adults Construct, Develop, and Maintain Their Social Circles. In Proceedings of the 12th EAI International Conference on Pervasive Computing.

11. Wang, X., Knearem, T., Gui, F., Gupta, S., Zhu, H., Williams, M., & Carroll, J. M. (2018, April). A Safety Net: How Older Adults Build and Maintain Interpersonal Relationships. In Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-6).

12. Gupta, S., Mustafa, S. Z., & Kumar, H. (2017). Smart People for Smart Cities: A Behavioral Framework for Personality and Roles. In Advances in Smart Cities (pp. 35-42). Chapman and Hall/CRC.

13. Chaturvedi, M., & Gupta, S. (2015, June). International Cooperation to Enhance Website Security. In 10th Annual Symposium on Information Assurance (ASIA’15) (p. 28).

Research Experience

Research Assistant (Fall 2017-Spring 2020, Spring 2023)

• Citizen Science

  • Led research to understand activities of citizen-based water quality monitoring groups to see how their practices help in improving local water systems and also transform their communities to become more smart and connected.

  • Used qualitative methods such as interviews, participatory design, field observations, and focus groups to understand citizen science practices, and gather requirements for technology design to support and amplify these practices.

  • Partnered and collaborated with local citizen science water quality monitoring groups in Centre County, PA, to develop prototypes of a citizen science collaboratory to better connect and support practice and dissemination of water quality research led by citizens.

  • Partnered and collaborated with “The Commons”, a non-profit technology development group, to conduct user research and aid the development of The Water Data Collaborative, a networked community to connect citizen-based water quality monitoring groups across North America.

• Sense of Misinformation in Local Community

  • Collaborated with a junior graduate student, taking a leadership role. The project aimed to gain insights into the dynamics of misinformation within the local community, employing a case study approach to examine a specific community conflict.

  • Co-designed the research framework and interview protocol, and took the lead on data analysis.

  • Co-authored a forthcoming research paper for submission to CHI 2024.

• Community Informatics: Case Study of a Community Conflict

  • Led a case study research to explore a local community conflict due to concerns over urban sprawl and water contamination. Conducted interviews with key stakeholders representing different sides of the conflict, and developed design implications for information technology to empower local communities.

• Positive Aging: Health Coproduction in Older Adults

  • Collaborated with post-doctoral fellows in my research group to understand how mobile technology can support health and well-being engendered by older adult’s social, collaborative, and creative practices.

  • Conducted interviews, field observations and data analysis to develop design implications.

• Designing for People with Visual Impairment (PVI)

  • Led a study to understand what “independence” means for people with visual impairment.

  • Extracted data from r/Blind subreddit and conducted thematic analysis to construct the meaning of “independence” for PVI, and developed design implications.

Teaching Experience

Graduate Teaching Fellow (Spring and Fall 2021)​, Penn State University
Lead instructor of IST 331: Foundations of Human-Centered Design

I was awarded the Graduate Teaching Fellowship by the College of Information Science and Technology, Penn State for two semesters, Spring and Fall of 2021. The fellowship allowed me to independently design and teach the IST 331 course offered to undergraduate students. I incorporated teaching through a project-oriented learning by doing approach, and managed around 30 students in each class.

Graduate Teaching Assistantship (Fall 2020, Spring 2022 – Fall 2022), Penn State University
I was the teaching assistant for the following courses:

• HCDD 113 “Foundations of Human-Centered Design” (Fall 2020): I was a teaching assistant for two sections of this course. I assisted Dr. John M. Carroll and Prof. Emily Wenk in grading assignments, in-class activities, and coached students who needed help with group or individual work.

• HCDD 440 “Foundations of Human-Centered Design Capstone Course” (Spring 2022): Assisted Dr. Steven Haynes in grading assignments and coaching students with in-class group work.

• IST 402 “Scenario-based design: Perspectives and Portfolios for UX Designers” (Fall 2022): Assisted Dr. John M. Carroll in grading assignments and exams, and coaching students with class work and assignments.

Work Experience

• The Commons, Research Collaborator | Remote | May 2020 – December 2022

  • Collaborated with a technology development NPO and cross-functional team to lead user studies, supporting the development of two citizen science apps focused on watershed initiatives and creating a national network of citizen science groups.

  • Communicated insights by publishing a research paper at the premier CSCW Conference 2022.

• IBM Research, Summer Research Intern | Almaden, CA | June 2021 – August 2021 

  • I worked in the Accelerated Materials Discovery (AMD) research group where I led a research study to understand barriers in knowledge dense interdisciplinary research like AMD centered around AI.

  • Conducted interviews and participatory design sessions to develop design implications with GPT trained on scientific libraries and scenario-based design for explainable AI, addressing identified barriers in interdisciplinary research.

  • Communicated findings through a research paper that is currently under review for ACM GROUP 2025.

• Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Graduate Research Intern | New Delhi, India | January 2016 – May 2016 

  • Designed and executed a research project to draw design implications for improving web accessibility using social media analytics.

  • Used social media analytics to extract and analyze twitter feeds on web accessibility and web design, drew design implications and prepared a research report.

• HITLAB, Summer Intern | NYC, NY| June 2015 – July 2015

  • Examined biosensors available in the market for pharmaceutical companies running clinical trials to produce a ranking of products along nine end points and a searchable database.

  • Created a database of healthcare related start-ups around the world to analyze the growth trajectory of healthcare technology start-ups globally.

  • Conducted user studies for beta testing of a health app.

  • I was awarded the ‘Star of the Week’ accolade for extraordinary performance in projects and presentations.                                                                                                                                                                                             

Talks

Conference and Poster Presentations

• “Conceptual translation problems in cross-functional materials discovery teams” – 2023, American Chemical Association (ASC), Fall 2023: Harnessing the Power of Data

• “Citizen Science for Public Health” – 2023, HITLAB’s 2023 Innovators Summit: The Promise & Potential of Digital Health

• “Facilitating Inter-Group Collaboration in Field-Based Citizen Science” – 2023, Penn State Graduate School Exhibition

• “Instagram of Rivers: Facilitating Distributed Collaboration in Hyperlocal Citizen Science” – 2022, ACM CSCW Conference

• “Not in my Backyard!? Lessons from a Community Conflict” – 2021, ACM C&T Conference

• “International Cooperation to Enhance Website Security” – 2015, Annual Symposium on Information Assurance (ASIA’15)

Invited Seminars

• “Women’s Health Tech Wednesday” – HITLAB, May 2023

• “AI in Interdisciplinary Research: Case of Accelerated Materials Discovery” – IBM Research, March 2023

• “Introduction to the ‘Water Data Collaborative’ platform” – Spring Creek Watershed Commission, May 2022

• “Facilitating distributed collaboration in community-based water monitoring groups” – Lake Stewards of Maine, September 2022

Poster Presentations

• “Facilitating Inter-Group Collaboration in Field-Based Citizen Science” – Penn State Graduate School Exhibition 2023

Student Advising

• (2019) Yaxi Liu, undergraduate majoring in Computer Science and Engineering, Penn State

  • Project: “Designing Hackathons for Community-Based Water Quality Monitoring”

    • Mentored on prototype development for a participatory design study and qualitative data analysis.

• (2020) Julia Jablonski, undergraduate majoring in Computer Science and Engineering, Penn State

  • Project: “User study of the citizen science app “Water Reporter”

    • Mentored on data transcription, qualitative data analysis, and technical writing.

    • Co-authored a research paper which was published in ACM CSCW 2022.

• (2022) Jiyoon Kim, first year PhD student in College of Information Science and Technology, Penn State

  • Project: “Design Space Analysis of Citizen-Based Water Quality Monitoring Applications”

    • Mentored on data collection, systematic review, data analysis, and technical writing.

    • Co-authored a research paper which is under review at ACM CSCW 2023.

  • Project: “Misinformation in Local Community”

    • Mentored on design of the interview protocol, qualitative data analysis, and technical writing.

• (2022) Ya-Fang Lin, first year PhD student in College of Information Science and Technology, Penn State
  
  

  • Project: “Design Space Analysis of Citizen-Based Water Quality Monitoring Applications”

    • Mentored on data collection, systematic review, data analysis, and technical writing.

    • Co-authored a research paper which is under review at ACM CSCW 2023.

Academic Service

• Associate Chair for ACM CSCW Poster 2023

• Program Committee member for C&T 2023

• External paper reviewer:

  • 2023: CHI LBW, CSCW, DIS, INTERACT

  • 2022: CSCW

  • 2021: CSCW, CHI LBW, INTERACT

  • 2020: CSCW, CHI, NordiCHI

  • 2019: CSCW, DIS, INTERACT

• Selected to participate in CRA Grad Cohort, 2019

Skills

• Research Methods : Interviews, Observation/Ethnography, Participatory Design Research, Scenario-Based Design, Focus Groups, Surveys, Personas, Contextual Inquiry, Usability Testing, Heuristic Evaluation, Summative and Formative Evaluation, Workshops, Card Sorting, Journey Maps, Storyboarding, UML, Software Prototyping

• Tools and Programming Skills : Adobe Xd, Figma, Sketch, NVivo, QDA Miner, R, Novice Python, SPSS, Minitab, HTML, CSS, Latex

• Project Management: Design Thinking, Agile UX, SCRUM

Awards and Honors

• 2022: IST Graduate Student Travel Grant, Penn State University

• 2021: Performance Award, IBM Research

• 2021: Graduate Teaching Fellowship (Spring & Fall 2021), College of IST, Penn State University

• 2015: Star of the Week Accolade for extraordinary performance in projects and presentations, HITLAB

References

• Dr. John M. Carroll (Advisor)
  Distinguished Professor
  Pennsylvania State University
  jmc56@psu.edu

• Dr. Mary Beth Rosson (Referee 1)
  Professor
  Pennsylvania State University
  mrosson@psu.edu

• Dr. Andrea Tapia (Referee 2)
  Professor
  College of Information Science and Technology
  Pennsylvania State University
  axh50@psu.edu

• Dr. Elizabeth Boyer (Referee 3)
  Professor
  Department of Ecosystem Science Management
  Pennsylvania State University
  ewb100@psu.edu