User-Centered Computer Aided Language Learning

Panayiotis Zaphiris is a senior lecturer at the Centre for Human-Computer Interaction Design, School of Informatics of City University London (UK). Before joining City University, he was a researcher at the Institute of Gerontology at Wayne State University (USA), where he also got his PhD in Human-Computer Interaction. He also holds an MSc in Systems Engineering and a BSc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland. His research interests lie in human-computer interaction with an emphasis in inclusive design and social aspect of computing. He is also interested in internet-related research, such as Web usability, online communities, e-learning, computer aided leanguage learning (CALL) and social network analysis of online computer-mediated human-to-hman interactions. Panayiotis was the principal investigator of the JISC Information Visualisation Foundation Student an a co-investigator on the DRC Formal Investigation into Web Site Accessibility (managing the automatic testing of 1000 websites) and the JISC Usability Studies for JISC Services and Information Environment projects.

Giorgos Zacharia is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at MIT, USA, and a member of the Center for Biological and Computational Learning of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. His research focuses on multitask learning, and learning algorithms for ranking and conjoint analysis problems. He holds an S.M. from the Software Agents group of the MIT Media Laboratory, where he did research in reputation mechanisms for online communities, dynamic pricing, and information retrieval. His research interests in Human Computer Interaction include e-learning and quantitative methods for evaluating interactions of networked communities. Zacharia was the Founder and Chief Scientist of Open Ratings Inc. where he lead research and development, to develop supply base risk management solutions using predictive data mining. [Editor]