My research is primarily focused on improving the ways in which people can represent, find, use, exploit, and share digitally encoded knowledge. Below are some of my current research areas.
Constant Companion
Studying how humans will relate and interact with personal Artifical
Intelligences designed to be their agents and companions. We are
studying how visuals (augmented reality glasses) and audible
(wireless earbuds) provide natural interactions with AI avatars.
We are particulary studying how these technologies can assist the
elderly and those with physical/mental limitations.
Shard Open Scholarship (SOS)
(Scholarly Communications, Altmetrics, Annotations,
Open Publishing|Access|Data|Science).
ArchiveOne, formerly known
as NeoRef is an archive
for all scholarly materials, including articles, books, presentations,
software, genetic sequences, annotations, reviews, etc. Areas of emphasis
include development of global paradigms for
colloboration and sharing, annotation models, open publishing
models, search and discover of knowledge. An example
implementation is documented in our 2008 YouTube video on NeoNote.
We also study the technical
and policy issues involved with freely available archives of all scholarly
literature that allow for the storage, searching and retrieval of information
without the need for the traditional framework of publishers and review systems.
A general NeoRef presentation is NeoRef
Scholarly Communications
Visualization and User Interface Design
Development of computer workstations as the display interfaces for the practice
of medicine, and in particular, radiology. Previous work includes design principles
for radiology workstation design, and specific designs and implementations
(chest CT, mammography, 3D). Current interests include (1) investigating what
choices of mental models and roam and zoom techniques are most effective when
using images larger than the display resolution, examining what
visualization and interactive features are effective (or not
effective) for mobile devices like iPhone and Android, and (3) effective CHI techniques
for dynamic searching of very large sets of content items (ie. universe of
scholarly publications, or at least library catalogs). Some
examples tools our lab has built include
ICIS--Interactive Comments in Schema,
JAR--Journal Author
Rights,
PHR--Personal Health Records.
Information Seeking
We are studying information seeking, primarily in academic
settings. We have completed a national survey of information
seeking at five universities. We are conducting interviews with
individual faculty and laboratories about their workflows and
practices. We are also interested in information seeking
interfaces, and are working with UNC and TRLN to design better
library catalog interfaces. We have obsever studies and log
analysis studies examining how people use university library
catalogs. A particular area of interest is combining faceted
based searching with text searching, and also dynamic topic
clustering.
Bioinformatics
Ultrastructure: Working with Morgan Giddings and Jeff Long to study
the application of Ultrastructure, a novel notational system to represent
knowledge in a flexible way using relational databases, to bioinformaticss
to represent and integrate current and future information information from
all genome sciences domains. We have also working on development
and design of representation structures (primarily databases)
for a number of research projects at UNC including mouse
databases, proteomics databases, plant comparative genetics,
schizophrenia. An example tool is TAMAL
Digital Libraries
Dr. Hemminger helped found The Center for Research and Development of Digital
Libraries (CRADLE) in 2002, and currently serves as the organizer of the group.
This project brings together many active digital library researchers and projects
at UNC and worldwide. He is also interested in Electronic Theses and Disserations.
He has developed a ETD for SILS scholarly literature (part of NeoRef), and
chairs the campus group that developed ETDs for UNC-CH, and
continues to expand services provided by the library for
supporting ETDs on campus.
Virseum
I have proposed a methodology for digitally capturing both the content and
entire exhibits of museums, so that they can be visited in a virtual reality
setting. The virtual reality representation is unique in that the environments
and objects are captured and displayed in way that is both visually compelling
(photographic quality), and spatial accurate (millimenter measurements are
possible). This work is in conjunction with 3rdTech, who developed the DeltaSphere
digitizer. Virseum
Medical Informatics
Currently looking at modifying user behaviors through innovative
uses of technology (mobile devices, apps, websites). Application
in breast cancer, young adult cancer surviors, seniors and
medications. In earlier times, I did work on Digital Imaging and Communications (DICOM) standards work. Dr. Hemminger chairs
Working Group 11 (Display), and is an active member and author in Working
Groups 15 (Digital Xray, Mammo, Computer Aided Detection), Working Group 17
(3D), AAPM Task group 18 (Electronic Display). For a listing of existing DICOM
international standards and new standards under development see the DICOM
website at NEMA.
Databases
Integating disparate databases. Handling very large
databases. Utilizing newer technologies (NoSQL). Primary
emphasis is on scholarly materials and biological databases (genetics, protoemics, metabolomics).
Datamining
Knowledge discovery via data mining of large and integrated databases. Application
of statistical pattern recognition and feature analysis techniques to the
analysis of genomic and proteomic databases.