Foley Scholars Endowment
The Foley Scholar Endowment, established at the 15th Anniversary of the GVU Center, is named for Dr. James D. Foley, professor and founder of the GVU Center at Georgia Tech and Interim Dean of the College of Computing. The award was established by Dr. Foley’s colleagues and GVU alumni to honor his significant contributions in the field of computing, his influence on the work of others, and his dedication to the development of new research directions. To extend Jim’s legacy and to continue building upon his work, two graduate fellowships of $5,000 are awarded annually to exceptional students active in GVU research.
About Dr. Jim Foley
Dr. Foley came to Georgia Tech in 1991 and a year later established the GVU research center by bringing together Georgia Tech faculty and students with research interests in graphics, visualization and usability. At the time, academic activity in this area was just beginning, and Foley’s visionary efforts helped establish the credibility of human computer interaction as a serious discipline within computer science. The program has since risen to national prominence and has become a hot spot for socially relevant cutting edge technologies. GVU faculty and students have since created innovations in health, home, usable security, work, gaming, arts and entertainment, learning – and the list grows continually.
Dr. Foley also had a central role in founding the HCI master’s program along with the HCC PhD program. Through the years, he has remained steadfast in his desire to provide bright young minds with the environment and support they need in order to flourish. His prominent legacy will include the significant impact he has had on students.
More about Jim Foley
The 2009 Foley Scholars
The 2009-2010 Foley Scholars are Marshini Chetty and Erika Poole, both Human-Centered Computing Ph.D. candidates in the School of Interactive Computing.
The Foley Scholars Endowment is awarded on a merit basis for overall brilliance and potential impact. Marshini and Erika were selected from an outstanding group of eight finalists, Betsy DiSalvo, Matt Flagg, Andrea Grimes,Thomas Smyth, Erich Stuntebeck, and Sarita Yardi.
The winners and finalists were selected by an advisory board comprised of GVU alumni, current faculty, and industry partners.
Marshini Chetty
Understanding the Everyday Networked Home
Marshini is a fifth year PhD candidate in Human-Centered Computing. She received her masters and bachelors degrees in Computer Science from the University of Cape Town, South Africa in 2005 and 2002. During her dissertation research, she has studied households in Atlanta, Seattle and Cambridge (UK) to understand how they manage their networked technologies. Currently, she's implementing and evaluating Kermit, a visual home networking tool for showing households how different people in the home are using network resources. Her aim is to understand the social consequences of introducing real-time resource monitoring tools into the home, and to derive design implications for future domestic technologies. Marshini's other interests include creating technologies for environmental sustainability and in the field of human computer interaction for international development.
Erika Poole
Supporting Technological Advice Sharing in Homes
Erika Poole is a 6th year Ph.D. candidate in Human-Centered Computing at Georgia Tech. Her research focuses on how people cope with technological complexity at home. She studies the source of user experience problems with interconnected home technologies and how people share advice with one another to overcome these issues. Through this research, she aims to create more effective and enjoyable ways for people to give and receive technical advice to one another. Erika holds a BS degree in computer science from Purdue University and an MS in computer science from Georgia Tech.
The 2009 Foley Scholars Finalists
Betsy DiSalvo
Leveraging Cultural Technology Practices: Breaking open the console with Glitch Game Testers
Betsy is a third year Ph.D. student in Human Centered Computing. She is pursuing research that examines how cultural practices impact technology use by youth, and how we can leverage these cultural practices to develop effective and sustainable education. She is focusing on young African American men's use of video games and why they are not leveraging this into an interest in computer science as other groups do. In response to this Betsy has created the Glitch Game Testers, a sustainable educational outreach program and a research partnership between Georgia Tech and Morehouse College. In Glitch, teens work as game testers, testing real pre-release games for game companies and participate in computer science workshops. Through this project, we have seen a dramatic increase in the number of participants who intend to go to college, and want to major in computer science. Glitch is funded by the NSF Broadening Participation in Computing initiative.
Matt Flagg
Human Video Textures
Matt is a 6th year Ph.D. candidate studying Computer Vision and Graphics under the advisement of Dr. James M. Rehg. Originally from Jacksonville, Florida, he received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science from Georgia Tech in 2002 and 2003. In 2003, Matt co-founded a local tech company named PlayMotion to provide computer vision-based entertainment products and services. In 2007, his company launched a flagship installation at Epcot which continues to entertain tens of thousands of guests a day. PlayMotion was selected as a Top 10 Innovative Company by the Technology Association of Georgia in 2008. In 2006, his research on Projector-Guided Painting was featured on the cover of the conference proceedings for UIST, User Interface Software Technology. Matt is now working on his dissertation research on the problem of human video textures with application to photorealistic avatars for entertainment and training.
Andrea Grimes
Designing Culturally Relevant Technologies to Address Health Disparities
Andrea Grimes is a Human-Centered Computing Ph.D. candidate. Her research lies within the fields of human-computer interaction (HCI) and computer supported cooperative work (CSCW). Andrea studies aspects of human life to design technology that resonates with existing sociocultural landscapes. Much of her work has focused on designing technology to address diet-related health disparities in the African American population. To this end, she studies how culture shapes health behaviors and attitudes, and how health technologies can account for this relationship. Her work has involved designing and evaluating a nutrition-oriented mobile game and community-based experience sharing applications. Her other research includes examining the future of food research in HCI and designing technologies to support family health. She received a B.S. in Computer Science from Northeastern University.
Thomas Smyth
New Media, Deliberation, and Democracy in the Developing World
Thomas is a 3rd year Ph.D student in GVU's Technology and International Development Lab. He is interested in understanding how new media technologies can better support public deliberation and the
democratic process in areas where technological skills and infrastructures are scarce. He recently spent the summer in Bangalore, India studying the widespread practice of peer-to-peer multimedia sharing on low-cost mobile phones.
Erich Stuntebeck
Powerline-supported In-home Wireless Sensing and Localization
Erich is a sixth year Ph.D. student in Electrical and Computer Engineering and a member of Dr. Gregory Abowd’s Ubiquitous Computing Research Group. His research broadly focuses on Infrastructure Mediated Sensing (IMS), which looks at using existing building infrastructure in innovative ways to support sensing throughout a building. Erich’s current research focus within IMS is looking at using the electrical wiring of a building to support indoor localization (locating people and objects within a building) and to extend the range of very-low-power wireless sensors. He holds an MSECE from Georgia Tech, as well as an MBA and a B.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Notre Dame.
Sarita Yardi
Teens as Designers of Social Networks
Sarita is a 4th year Ph.D. candidate in the School of InteractiveComputing at Georgia Tech. She is interested in social networks and network science and the role of parents and friends in how teens develop technical capital online. She has been studying how Atlanta area teens use technology in their lives and is currently running a series of studies where teens create online social networks with prosocial messages and measure and analyze participation on the sites they build. Sarita received her MS from UC Berkeley's School of Information and her BA in Computer Engineering from Dartmouth College.
The finalists and recipients of the 2009-2010 Foley Scholarship were honored at Foley Scholars Reception & Dinner co-hosted by GVU's industrial partner Google on October 14, 2009 at the Ansley Golf Club.
Be a part of making GVU excel!
Support our best and brightest by donating to the Foley Scholars Endowment.
Click here to learn about the various levels of giving.
Donation by check or by credit card are the easiest and most frequently used ways to make a gift to Georgia Tech. Your gift will be recorded and tax receipt will be issued promptly. Please include a short note with your check stating the purpose (Foley Scholars Endowment) or note the purpose on the memo line of your check.
Send a check by mail:
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Made payable to the Georgia Tech Foundation
Attention: Vivian Chandler, External Relations
GVU Center@Georgia Tech
85 5th Street, NW
Atlanta, GA 30332-0760
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Pledges - Instead of an outright gift, you may choose to support the Foley Scholars Endowment by pledging a set amount over a period of up to five years. You may do this by completing a Letter of Intent or an equivalent, which clearly indicates the total pledge amount, the payment schedule, purpose of gift, and any pertinent matching gift information.
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Questions about the Foley Scholars Endowment?
Contact Vivian Chandler @ 404-385- 1252 or chandler "at" cc.gatech.edu
