Kelly Lyons Professor Faculty of Information University of Toronto

Contact Info

Research

My research is situated in the emerging field of service science: the science of the human, organizational, and technological systems called service systems in which I investigate social platforms as enablers for service system interactions. My research interests also include knowledge mobilization, data science, social media, collaborative work, and software engineering.

Prior to joining the University of Toronto iSchool in January 2008, I was the Program Director of the IBM Toronto Lab Centre for Advanced Studies (CAS) which partners with university faculty members and graduate students around the world to apply their research to the software products that are built in the IBM Toronto Software Lab. For more information about my work in this role, click here.

Research Funding

• Data Sciences Institute (DSI) Catalyst Grant, PI: M. Alexopoulos (UofT). Using Data Science Methods to Understand the Differential Impact of COVID on Researcher Output by Gender, 2022-2023: $100,000 over 2 years.
• IBM Canada Advanced Studies Fellowship, PI: S. Zhou (UofT). Line of Business Explainability, 2021-2024: $75,000 over 3 years.
• eCampus, Virtual Learning Strategy (VLS), Co-PI ($17,000 to UofT), PI: M. Bliemel (UOIT), Co-PI H. Ali-Hassan (York U.), K. Lyons (UofT). Serious Game to Teach Data Literacy and Visualization, 2021: $89,678 over one year.
• UCL And University of Toronto - COVID 19 Challenges, Economic, Individual, and Societal Impacts of Pandemic Responses on Cities, Co-PI with E. Lomas (UCL), A. Walford (UCL), M. Alexopoulos (UofT), 2021: $15,000 (UofT), £9,900 (UCL) over one year.
• SSHRC Knowledge Synthesis Grant, 2021, $29,587 over one year, "Canada's workforce in the Digital Age: Evaluating the Future of Skills, Jobs, Gaps and Policies Post COVID-19", Co-PI: M. Alexopoulos, UofT.
• NSERC Discovery Grant, March 2020 to March 2025, $175,000 over 5 years, "A Data-Driven Approach to Social Platforms for Supporting Value-cocreation and Innovation in Software Development and Industry-Academic Collaborations".
• University College London-University of Toronto, Fund for Workshops on Developing Collaborative Projects and Exchange Activities in Artificial Intelligence, Co-PI, "AI Governance: Building ethical frameworks to balance risk and innovation", 2020: $15,000 (to R. Alexander and K. Lyons, UofT) and £13,000 (to Co-PI’s J. Bunn and E. Lomas, UCL).
• Mitacs Accelerate, "Multi-Perspective Text Analysis of Social Knowledge Networks", 2017-2019 $197,500 over 2 years ($50,000 to K. Lyons over 2 years) PI: E. Stroulia, University of Alberta, Co-PIs: K. Lyons, University of Toronto and L. Lefsrud, University of Alberta, with Partner Organizations, IBM Canada, COSIA, Cerebri AI, and SOSCIP.
• NSERC Strategic Project Grant September 2015 to September 2019, $747,000, "Data-Driven Knowledge Mobilization, Translation & Innovation" PI: K. Lyons, Co-PIs; K. Booth, UBC; R. Miller, University of Toronto; E. Stroulia, University of Alberta.
• CFI-JELF, 2015, $69,021, "Large Scale Analysis of Textual Repositories", PIs: P. Andritsos and K. Lyons.
• NSERC Engage Grant, 2015, $25,000, with Dell Software Canada "Semantic Information Extraction for Creating an Expertise Knowledge Base". Check out the IT World Canada article about this project.
• NSERC Engage Grant, 2014, $24,900, with Sciencescape "Investigating Social Network Analysis (SNA) for Recommendation Systems in Science Research Discovery".
• NSERC Discovery Grant, March 2013 to March 2018, $75,000 over 5 years, "Interaction Systems for Smarter Service Engagements".
• GRAND (Graphics, Animation, and New Media) Network, March 2013 to 2014, $15,000 over 1 year, "Media Enabled Organizational Workflow, Collaboration in the GRAND Forum", Project Leader: Eleni Stroulia (University of Alberta); Project Co-Leader: Kellogg Booth, University of British Columbia.
• CA Technologies MITACS Accelerate Grant with doctoral candidate, Zack Hayat, April 2013 to September 2013, $15,000 over 1 year, "Analyzing a Large User Community using the Social Network Analysis Framework"
• SAP Business Objects Vancouver Academic Research Center Fellowship and Faculty Grant and NSERC Collaborative Research and Development Grant (CRD) from May 2009 until April 2012, $271,749, over 3 years "Collaboration Technology for Business Intelligence".
• NSERC Discovery Grant March 2011 to 2012, $14,000 1 year, Title: “Improving Technology-Mediated Human-to-Human Interactions in Service Systems".
• IBM University Relations Smarter Planet Industry Skills Innovation Award, 2011; $10,000 over 1 year; Other Participants: R. McEwen, Faculty of Information, "Building Smarter Cities Case Studies in an Information, Systems, Services, and Design Course"
• NSERC Discovery Grant March 2008 to 2011, $15,000/year for 3 years, Title: “Tools and methods for modeling, managing, and implementing service systems”.
• Connaught Start-Up Grant April 2008 to December 2009, $10,000, Title: “Understanding Not-for-Profit Service Systems”.

Media

• Hilson, G., (July 15, 2015) U of T and Dell Research collaborate on how to find expertise within an organization, IT World Canada.
• Serebrin, J. (January 18, 2016) With tech giants like Google going after female talent, how can startups compete?, The Globe and Mail.
• Bathke, B. (December 18, 2015) How public schools aren’t living up to our expectations in computer science education, Dallas Morning News.
• Bathke, B. (November 9, 2015) The importance of early exposure to STEM fields, The Deseret News.
• Lopez-Pacheco, Alexandra. (2010, November 15). Understanding the Service-centric Economy. Financial Post.

Publications

• Liu, Y., Noei, E., & Lyons, K. (2022). How ReadMe files are structured in open source Java projects. Information and Software Technology, 148, 106924. (PDF)
• Qiu, R., Lyons, K., Chen, W. (2021). (eds) AI and Analytics for Smart Cities and Service Systems Proceedings of the 2021 INFORMS International Conference on Service Science, Lecture Notes in Operations Research, Springer, Cham.
• Noei, E. and Lyons, K. (2022). A Study of Gender in User Reviews Posted on the Google Play Store, Empirical Software Engineering, 27(2), 1-28. (PDF)
• Alexopoulos, M. & Lyons, K. (2021). Toward understanding the COVID-19 impact on Data Science Innovation in Canada, Accepted for publication in CASCON ’21: The 31st Annual International Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering, November 22-26, 2021, Toronto, Canada (Virtual Event), 10 pages. (PDF)
• Alexopoulos, M., Lyons, K., Mahetaji, K., & Chiu, K. (2021). Evaluating the Disruption of COVID-19 on AI Innovation using Patent Filings, Accepted for publication in the 2021 IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society (ISTAS), 28-31 October 2021, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada (Virtual Event), 6 pages. (PDF)
• Noei, E., Perrie, J., Hao, Y., Hayat, Z., Colak, R., Vembu, S., Lyons, K., and Molyneux, (2021). S. A Qualitative Study of Large-Scale Recommendation Algorithms for Biomedical Knowledge Bases, International Journal on Digital Libraries volume 22, 197–215. (PDF)
• Bashardoost, B. G., Miller, R. J., Lyons, K., & Nargesian, F. (2020). Knowledge translation. Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment, 13(12), 2018-2032. (PDF)
• Bashardoost, B. G., Miller, R. J., Lyons, K., & Nargesian, F. (2020). Knowledge translation: Extended technical report. arXiv preprint arXiv:2008.01208 (PDF)
• Anderson, L., Lyons, K. and Sawatani, Y. (2020). Research Approaches to Service Innovation: Organizational Perspectives, to appear in Advances in the Human Side of Service Engineering, J. Spohrer and C. Leitner (Eds.): AHFE 2020, AISC 1208, 7 pages (PDF).
• Alexander, R. and Lyons, K. (2020). Barriers to Service Innovation Using Data Science, to appear in Advances in the Human Side of Service Engineering, J. Spohrer and C. Leitner (Eds.): AHFE 2020, AISC 1208, 6 pages (PDF).
• Brisson, S., Noei, E., & Lyons, K. (2020). We Are Family: Analyzing Communication in GitHub Software Repositories and Their Forks. Accepted for publication in 27th IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering London, Ontario, Canada, February 18-21, 2020 (pp. 59-69). (PDF)
• Perrie, J., Xie, J., Nayebi, M., Fokaefs, M., Lyons, K., & Stroulia, E. (2019). City on the river: visualizing temporal collaboration. In Proceedings of the 29th Annual International Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering (pp. 82-91). (PDF)
• Noei, E., & Lyons, K. (2019). A survey of utilizing user-reviews posted on Google play store. In Proceedings of the 29th Annual International Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering (pp. 54-63). (PDF)
• Bashardoost, B. G., Miller, R., and Lyons, K., (2019). Towards a Benchmark for Knowledge Base Exchange, In Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Challenges and Experiences from Data Integration to Knowledge Graphs, held in conjunction with 25th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining 2019 (Anchorage, Alaska , August 5, 2019), 5 pages. (PDF)
• Maglio P., Kieliszewski C., Spohrer J., Lyons K., Patrício L., Sawatani Y. (2019). (eds) Handbook of Service Science, Volume II. Service Science: Research and Innovations in the Service Economy. Springer, Cham.
• Messinger, P. R., Ge, X., Smirnov, K., Stroulia, E., & Lyons, K. (2019). Reflections of the extended self: Visual self-representation in avatar-mediated environments. Journal of Business Research, in press. (PDF)
• Frost, R.B., Cheng, M., & Lyons, K. (2019) A Multilayer Framework for Service System Analysis. In: Maglio P., Kieliszewski C., Spohrer J., Lyons K., Patrício L., Sawatani Y. (eds) Handbook of Service Science, Volume II. Service Science: Research and Innovations in the Service Economy. Springer, Cham, 285-306. (PDF)
• Turner, D., Serrano, D., Stroulia, E., & Lyons, K. (2018). A T-Shaped Measure of Multidisciplinarity in Academic Research Networks: The GRAND Case Study, In INFORMS International Conference on Service Science (Phoenix, AZ, November 3, 2018), 31-41. (PDF)
• Frost, R., & Lyons, K. (2017). Service Systems Analysis Methods and Components: A Systematic Literature Review. Service Science, 9(3), 219-234. (PDF)
• Luo, D. & Lyons, K. (2017). CASCONet: A Conference dataset. 5 pages. arXiv:1706.09485 [cs.DL] (PDF)
• Perrie, J., Hao, Y., Hayat, Z., Colak, R., Lyons, K., Vembu, S., & Molyneux, S. (2017). Implementing Recommendation Algorithms in a Large-Scale Biomedical Science Knowledge Base. arXiv preprint arXiv:1710.08579. (PDF)
• Rehman, S., Lyons, K., McEwen, R., & Sellen, K. (2017). Motives for sharing illness experiences on Twitter: Conversations of parents with children diagnosed with cancer, Journal of Information, Communication & Society, 1-16. (PDF)
• Hayat, T. & Lyons, K. (2017). A typology of collaborative research networks, Online Information Review, 41(2), 155-170, doi: 10.1108/OIR-11-2015-0368. (PDF)
• Li, Y., Lyons, K. (2016). Word Representation Using a Deep Neural Network. In Proceedings of the Centre for Advanced Studies Conference (CASCON) 2016, (Markham, Ontario, October 31 – November 2, 2016), 10 pages. (PDF)
• Bashardoost, B. G., Lyons, K., & Leung, R. (2016). A Goal-oriented Approach for Designing Collaboration Processes. Accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the 49th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Processes and Technologies for Small and Large Team Collaboration Mini-Track (Kauai, Oahu, HI, January 5-8, 2016), 10 pages. (PDF) Nominated for a best paper award
• Lyons, K. (2015). All I Really Need to Know (About Work), I Learned in CAS. In CAS and CASCON Honouring 25 Years of IBM Research and Innovation, (Eds.) M. Litoiu, K. Lyons, H. Müller, & J. Ng, 14-17. (PDF)
• Litoiu, M., Lyons, K., Müller, H., and Ng. J., Editors (2015). CAS and CASCON Honouring 25 Years of IBM Research and Innovation, 109 pages.
• Spohrer, J., Demirkan, H. & Lyons, K. (2015). Social Value: A Service Science Perspective, Service Systems Science: Translational Systems Sciences, Volume 2, 3-35. (PDF)
• Nasir, M., Lyons, K., Leung, R., Bailie A., & Whitmarsh, F. (2015). The Effect of a Collaborative Game on Group Work. In the Proceedings of the Centre for Advanced Studies Conference (CASCON) 2015, (Markham, Ontario, November 2-4, 2015), 130-139. Winner: Best Paper Award (PDF)
• Bashardoost Ghadiri, B., Christodoulakis, C., Yeganeh, S. H., Hassanzadeh, O. Miller, R. J. and Lyons, K. (2015). VizCurator: a Visual Tool for Curating Open Data, In Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on World Wide Web Companion 2015, Florence, Italy, May 2015, 195-198. (PDF)
• Lyons, K. & Oh, C. (2015). SOA4DM: Applying an SOA Paradigm to Coordination in Humanitarian Disaster Response. In the Proceedings of the Software Engineering in Society Track, ICSE 2015. Florence, Italy, May 2015, 4 pages. (PDF)

See my latest CV for a full list of publications.

Patents

• Awarded: Hawkins, J. L., Khusial, D., Lyons, K. A., McAllister, M. J., McKegney, R., McKenna, M. D., & Slonim, J. System and Method for Resolving Interdependencies between Heterogeneous Artifacts in a Software System, US Patent 8,707,260. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Filed 2008; Awarded: April 2014
• Filed: Hawkins, J. L., Khusial, D., Lyons, K. A., McAllister, M. J., Slonim, J., Smit, M. A. (2007). Privacy Modeling Framework for Software Applications, U.S. Patent No. 382,971. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
• Filed: Brisebois, M., Lyons, K., Ghadiri Bashardoost, B., Perrie, J., Silberman, G., and Morris, C., Automatically Generated Employee Profiles, Patent filed with USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) April 29, 2016, Assignee Dell Software, Inc.

Students and Postdocs

Past Post-Doctoral Fellows:

January 2019-December 2020	Ehsan Noei	Data-Driving Knowledge Mobilization, Translation, and Innovation
January 2018-June 2018	Maleknaz Nayebi	Data-Driving Knowledge Mobilization, Translation, and Innovation
July 2016-June 2017	Dixin Luo	Data-Driving Knowledge Mobilization, Translation, and Innovation

Current PhD Students

Blair Frost	Faculty of Information, University of Toronto	Thesis focus: AI Governance Systems	Since September 2019
Matthew Bouchard	Faculty of Information, University of Toronto	Thesis title: Playing with progression, immersion, and sociality: a study of meaning in APPMMAGs	Since January 2017, co-supervised with C. Krmpotich

Past PhD Students:

2022	Bahar Ghadiri Bashardoost	PhD	Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto	Knowledge Translation (co-supervised by R. Miller)
2014	Zack Hayat	PhD	Faculty of Information, University of Toronto	Structure, change over time, and outcomes of research collaboration networks: The case of GRAND

Past Masters Students

2020	Yuyang Liu	MI	Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto	How ReadMe Files are Structured in Open Source Java Projects
2020	Scott Brisson	MI	Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto	We Are Family: Analyzing Collaboration in GitHub Software Repositories and their Forks
2019	Sophia Huynh	MI	Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto	Visualizing Industry-Academia Collaboration Data with UniSankey
2016	Kathy Ge	MI	Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto	Predicting Expertise Level in Online Forums
2016	Yunpeng Li	MI	Faculty of Information, University of Toronto	Word Representation using Deep Neural Networks
2015	Jessica Perrie	MSc	Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto	City on the River: Visualizing Individual and Group Collaboration Over Time
2014	Bahar Ghadiri Bashardoost	MSc	Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto	Tool Support for Designing Collaboration Processes
2014	Sameen Rehman	MI	Faculty of Information, University of Toronto (Co-Supervised with K. Sellen)	Sharing illness experiences on Twitter: Conversations of parents with children diagnosed with cancer.
2013	Maaz Nasir	MSc	Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto	The Effect of Collaborative Games on Group Work
2013	Eleonore Fournier-Tombs	MI	Faculty of Information, University of Toronto	A New Architecture of the Public Sphere: Online Deliberation at the Liberal Party of Canada’s 2011 Extraordinary Convention
2013	Ali Moradian	MSc	Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto	Gamifying Collaborative Decision Making
2011	Stephen Tracy	MI	Faculty of Information, University of Toronto	Service Systems and Social Enterprise: Beyond the Economics of Business
2011	Dejana Bajić	MSc	Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto	Leveraging Social Media to Gather User Feedback for Software Development
2011	Fan Dong	MSc	Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto	A Group Decision Support System Study: Integrating Delphi into SAP StreamWork
2011	Abayomi King	MSc	Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto	Improving User Awareness through Automatic Status Updates in Software Development Teams
2007	Mark McKenna	MSc	Computer Science, Dalhousie University (Co-Supervised with J. Slonim and M. McAllister)	Semantic Graphs in Support of Software Reverse Engineering
2006	Mike Smit	MSc	Computer Science, Dalhousie University (Co-Supervised with J. Slonim and M. McAllister)	Detecting Privacy Infractions in e-Commerce Software Applications: A Framework and Methodology

Scholarly Service

• Service Science, a fully refereed and fast-track publication online journal, which is co-sponsored by the INFORMS Section on Service Science, 2009-2011; 2013-2018.
• Book Series: The Science of Service Systems (Book 1) and Service Systems Implementation (Book 2), 2009.

Recent Conference Organizing Committees:

• Chair, Steering Committee, Consortium for Software Engineering Research (CSER), 2018-present
• Member, Steering Committee, IBM Centre for Advanced Studies Conference (CASCON), 2015-present
• Associate Editor, International Conference on Information Systems, Smart Service Systems and Service Science Track, 2019, Track Co-Chairs: F. Lin, P. Maglio, and T. Tuunanen (Munich, Germany, Dec. 15-18, 2019)
• Program Co-Chair (with J. Wigglesworth), 27th Annual CASCON Conference, 2017, Markham, Ontario, 6-8 November, 2017
• Member, Steering Committee, Ontario Celebration of Women in Computing (ONCWIC), 2010-2017.

Recent Program Committees:

• Informs Conference on Service Science (CSS 2019)
• Reviewer, European Conference on Information Systems> (ECIS 2018)
• 40th International Conference on Software Engineering, Gothenburg, Sweden, May 27-June 3, 2018.
• 25th Annual CASCON 2015 Conference, Markham, Ontario, 2-4 November, 2015.
• 7th International Workshop on Social Software Engineering (SSE), Bergamo, Italy, 1 September, 2015
• The 38th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), Software Engineering in Society (SEIS) Track, Austin, TX, 14 - 22 May, 2016

Teaching

An overview of my teaching philosophy can be found here.

Current teaching:

• No teaching due to administrative duties.

Recent Past teaching:

• Winter 2020: INF 3902H Cooperative Education Placement (First Term) and INF 3903H Co-operative Education Placement (Second Term)
• Winter 2019: INF3910Y Workplace Project
• Winter 2018: INF3910Y Workplace Project
• Winter 2018: INF2313H Introduction to Service Science
• Fall 2016: INF2040 Project Management (two sections)
• Winter 2016: CCT374H Technologies of Knowledge Media
• Fall 2015: INF2313 Introduction to Service Science

Current Committees and Service

• Special Advisor to the Dean on Pandemic Planning, Faculty of Information
• Member, Search Committees: Assistant Professor - Human Centered Data Science; Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream - Contractually Limited Term Appointment - Information Systems (2 positions); Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream - Educational Design and/or Writing
• Member, Academic Continuity Leadership Group, Office of the Vice Provost, Academic Programs and Vice-Provost, Innovations in Undergraduate Education
• Member, Teaching and Learning Technology Advisory Committee (TLTAC), Office of the Vice Provost, Academic Programs and Vice-Provost, Innovations in Undergraduate Education
• Member, Toronto Initiative for Diversity & Excellence (TIDE)

Positions Held

• Faculty Affiliate, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society (2020-2021)
• Board Member, Canadian Association of Computer Science/Association informatique canadienne (CAN-CS/INFO-CAN), Elected, 2020-2023
• Chair, Awards Committee, for the Canadian Association of Computer Science/Association informatique canadienne (CAN-CS/INFO-CAN), Appointed, 2019-Present
• Council Member, INFORMS Service Science Section, Elected, 2020-2022
• Cross-appointed to the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto.

• IBM Toronto Lab CAS Faculty Fellow

• Member of the ACM and elected Member-at-Large of ACM Council from 2008 to 2012

• Member, Executive Committee, ACM Women (ACM-W), Appointed February 2009 to 2012

Personal Interests and Other Information

• I am very interested in promoting technology and computing to young women and have given many presentations to young people about the exciting careers available to them in information technology. I am a member of the University of Toronto Department of Computer Science Women in Computer Science community.

• I'm a member of the North York Masters Aquatic Club or North York Gators and Toronto Masters of the Universe. I practise as often as I can and compete when possible.

• Besides swimming, I enjoy yoga, cooking, and hanging out with my friends.

• I love spending time in the most beautful place in the world (Fort Frances and Rainy Lake). Check out an example of a Rainy Lake Sunset.