Kelly Lyons

Associate Professor
Faculty of Information
University of Toronto



Contact Info

Research

Publications

Teaching


Contact Info

Mailing address:
45 Willcocks (south east corner with Spadina) #314
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5S 1C7

Phone: +1-416-946-3839
e-mail: kelly.lyons (at) utoronto.ca
My blog: Moving2Academia

A copy of my CV can be found here, and brief bio here.

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

My current research interests include service science, social computing, collaboration, and business intelligence. My interest in service science results from my general interest in the application of technology in order to positively impact specific domains while taking into consideration the cultural and social implications of applying technology in those domains.

Establishing a research and teaching program in service science requires a multidisciplinary approach. It must combine knowledge about computing and technology with the social and cultural implications of how technology will be used in a specific business or societal service domain. I am a computer scientist at heart and a proud member of the computer science community. I am also very interested in how research advances in computer science can be made in order to impact something of importance (perhaps even change the world). I am fascinated by how these advances require understanding of and participation by people and society. I am extremely fortunate to be embarking on this program in the University of Toronto Faculty of Information, a leading member of the iSchool community where we study the relationship between information, technology, and people.

Research Projects

I have (not so) recently blogged about a proposed landscape for situating research in service science. My research is situated on the right-hand side of that landscape in technologies, work practices, and business models that support and mediate human-to-human interactions in services. I am currently involved in projects with collaborators in computer science and business schools.

Current Projects:

The first project is a collaboration with the SAP Business Objects Vancouver Academic Research Centre in the area of collaboration technology for business intelligence with PhD student, John Peco. The breadth and scope of decision making is expanding and technological and social trends are changing our expectations of decision processes. More decisions are made collaboratively and cross-organizationally with the consideration of multiple domains, information sources, and stakeholders. This research is investigating a variety of decision-making behaviours and contexts including collaboration activities among the emergent workforce population, specifically in relation to their use of the Internet and social computing technologies. The most recent research activity consists of a survey that is being distributed among university students, recently hired employees, and current co-op/Internship students working on assignment.

The second project centres around virtual worlds as mediating technologies for human-to-human interactions in services. With Henry Kim and Saggi Nevo I am working on a project to explore and understand the use of virtual worlds to mediate human-to-human interactions in business-to-business and organizational services.

I am also working with Paul Messinger, Eleni Stroulia, Xin Ge, Annie Niu, Mike Bone, and Kristen Smirnov on various research issues in Virtual Worlds from a marketing and retail services perspective.

The third project focuses on social computing tools and how they are used to mediate human-to-human interactions in services. This work builds on an earlier project with Pranam Kolari (Yahoo!), Yelena Yesha (UMBC), Stephen Perelgut (IBM) and Jen Hawkins (IBM) on the structure and use of internal corporate blog networks. With Steve Marks, we are looking at systematic methods for deciding which business processes to implement through IT services and where and how to incorporate social computing technologies within business services. We are evaluating the methods on a library service. This project also involved Jessica Szeto through a Canadian Distributed Mentoring Project.

Research Funding

Publications

Recent publications: See the Full List

Patents

While at IBM, I jointly filed two patents with university colleagues. They are both jointly filed in my name, but they are jointly owned by IBM and the university colleagues named.

Students

Current Students Supervised:

Current
John PecoPhD Student Faculty of Information, University of Toronto Topic: The affect on organizations of social computing and the next generation of knowledge workers
Dejana Bajić MSc StudentDepartment of Computer Science, University of Toronto
Fan DongMSc StudentDepartment of Computer Science, University of Toronto
Abayomi King MSc StudentDepartment of Computer Science, University of Toronto

Past
2007 Mark McKennaMastersComputer Science, Dalhousie UniversityCo-Supervised with Jacob Slonim and Mike McAllister Semantic Graphs in Support of Software Reverse Engineering
2006Mike SmitMasters Computer Science, Dalhousie University Co-Supervised with Jacob Slonim and Mike McAllister Detecting Privacy Infractions in e-Commerce Software Applications: A Framework and MethodologyCurrently a PhD student working with Eleni Stroulia in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Alberta


Graduate Student Committees
Starting 2009 Steve SzigetiPhDFaculty of Information, University of Toronto Supervisor: Joan Cherry


Graduate Student Exam Committees
2009 Exam Committee Member, Wendy WenQian Liu, PhD Defence, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Refactoring-based Requirements Refinement Towards Design (Supervisor: Steve Easterbrook)
2009 Second Reader, Samira Abdi, MSc Candidate, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto Recovering Related Artifacts in Software Projects' History: a Comparison of Information Retrieval Based Methods (Supervisor: Greg Wilson)
2008 Exam Committee Member, Alvin Chin, PhD Defence, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Behavioural Model Fusion (Supervisor: Mark Chignell)
2008 Exam Committee Member, Shiva Netaji, PhD Defence, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Behavioural Model Fusion (Supervisor: Marsha Chechik)
2008 Exam Committee Member, Flavio Rizzolo, PhD Defence, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, DescribeX: A Framework for Exploring and Querying XML Web Collections (Supervisor: Renée Miller)
2007 Exam Committee Chair, Victor Muntes, PhD Defence, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Genetic Optimization for Large Join Queries (Supervisors: Josep-Larriba Pey and Marta Pérez Casany)
2005 Exam Committee Chair, Kien Huynh MSc Defence, York University, Analysis through Reflection: Walking the EMF Model of BPEL4WS (Supervisor: Franck van Breugel)
1999 Exam Committee Member, Xiaoyan Qian, MSc, York University, Design, Implementation and Performance Tests for Predicate Introduction - A Semantic Query Optimization Technique for Database Queries (Supervisor: Jarek Gryz)

Scholarly Service

I am on the editorial board of:

I currently serve in the following program committees:

I recently served on the following program committees:

I am a reviewer for:

Selected Presentations, Workshops, and Talks


Teaching

An overview of my teaching philosophy can be found here.

In the winter of 2010, I will be teaching:

In the winter of 2009, I taught FIS1343 Introduction to Database Management and Design and FIS2306 Introduction to Service Science

In the fall of 2008, I taught two sections of FIS2301 Project Management

In the winter of 2008, I taught FIS2306 Introduction to Service Science which was based on that course.

In the winter of 2007, I co-taught (with Ross McKegney) COSC6002R Introduction to Service Science, Management, and Engineering, a graduate course in York University's Department of Computer Science and Engineering.


Committees and Service


Positions Currrently Held


Personal Interests and Other Information

Last updated: September 24, 2009