George Ferguson

Background

About George Ferguson

I am interested in challenges at the intersection of human-computer interaction and intelligent decision support—computer systems that help people solve problems in a natural way. I have 15+ years of research experience developing such systems, as well as: teaching courses; supervising students and colleagues; software development and system administration for Unix, Mac, Windows, and mobile platforms; and Web development and administration. I have proposed, received, and managed multi-million dollar projects from agencies including DARPA, ONR, NSF, and NIH. I was Program Chair of and received an Outstanding Paper award at I am looking for opportunities to take software to the next level and make a real difference in people's lives. Strengths- Excellent analytic and problem-solving skills, both creative and critical - Excellent programming skills, from C to Java to Lisp and beyond, including all Web languages and technologies both client- and server-side - Deep understanding of computation and computer systems, including how to design, develop, and evaluate computational solutions to hard problems - Extensive experience on the cutting edges of human-computer interaction, including user-centered design, natural language interfaces, and adaptive multimodal interactive systems - Excellent inter-personal skills, very highly rated teaching, effective participation in and management of technology and administrative teams Full list of academic publications: Technical specialties: Artificial Intelligence; Intelligent agents: agent communication languages, agent architectures; User interfaces: speech recognition, natural language understanding, dialogue, conversational agents; User-centered Design; Temporal reasoning: representation, planning, scheduling; Semantic Web: ontologies, knowledge-based systems; Medical informatics: electronic medical records, personal health records, self-care technologies.