Nurit Kirshenbaum Assistant Professor

I am an Assistant Professor in the Information and Computer Sciences department at the University of Hawaii. I work with Jason Leigh in the Laboratory for Advanced Visualizations and Applications and the newly created Hawaii Creativity and Technology (HiCat) lab.

nuritk [at] hawaii.edu

Research Interests

Human Computer Interaction, Tangible User Interfaces, Mixed Media, Visualization, Tools for Creativity and Collaboration

Research

Physicalization

Physicalizations - or Physical Visualizations - are a form of tangible interface where data is encoded in physical properties of the physicalization object. In LAVA we are particularly interested in use of augmented (via a projector) models of terrain used to illustarte geo-spatial data.

SAGE3

SAGE3, the Smart Amplified Group Environment is a rethinking of the successful SAGE2 system for collaboration between scientist fit for modern work scenarios of hybrid co-located and online meetings, and equiped with an AI engine that makes it easier for scientist to access AI capabilities for their analysis work.

PEPA deck

Often, tangible user interfaces use non-idiomatic forms of interaction. For this project, I was intersted in understanding such an interaction - bend gestures. I designed and developed interactive bendable game cards called PEPA (Paper-like Entertainment Platform Agents) and tried to understand if an application works well with bend gestures.

Visualizations

Working with scientists from applied math and micro-biome research, in this project we tried to develop ways to visualize and stream in real-time the flight of a drone in an area of interest. The purpose of the project is to allow researchers in the lab to view current and past images from the area of interest and detect changes in colors or other factors that may indicate a need to collect micro-biome samples from specific sites.

SAGE2

SAGE2 follows the successful SAGE software system that is used to drive ultra-high-resolution scalable display walls. The SAGE software enables its users (primarily researchers and engineers) to display, organize and manipulate large quantities of data in the form of visualizations to amplify collaborative sense-making.

Set&Motion

Set&Motion was originally called ShowFlow. It was created for the Student Inovation Contest for UIST conference 2015, where the demo of the tool was presented along with the show *Zee's mystery*. The tool won the award for best Software innovation.

Teaching

ICS-664: Advanced Human-Computer Interaction

Course Description: This course will address advanced topics of design and evaluation in Human-Computer Interaction. We will combine topics about HCI research, User Centered Design, and Tangible User Interfaces.

Spring 24 (Syllabus)

ICS/DATA/ACM-484/ICS-684: Data Visualization

Course Description: In this class we will learn the fundamentals of creating visualizations from data, see examples of different types of visualizations, and practice creating visualizations. We will learn how to design a visualization system that is effective and conveys a story.

Fall 23 (Syllabus)
Fall 24 (Coming up)

CV

Education

Institution	Area	Degree	Start	End
University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI	Computer Science	Ph.D.	2016	2021
University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI	Computer Science	M.Sc.	2014	2016
Quinnipiac University, Hamden, CT	Interactive Media	M.Sc.	2012	2014
Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel	Math	Associate Degree	2001	2004
Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel	Electrical Engineering	B.Sc.	1997	2001

Publications

K. Noe and N. Kirshenbaum. 2024. "Generalized Equitable Design Practice Meet Specific Indigenous Communities." In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’24), May 11– 16, 2024, Honolulu, HI, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 8 pages.
Belcaid, M., Leigh, J., Theriot, R., Kirshenbaum, N., Tabalba, R., Rogers, M., Johnson, A., Brown, M., Renambot, L., Long, L. and Nishimoto, A., 2023. "Reflecting on the Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment Team’s 20-Year Translational Research Endeavor in Digital Collaboration Tools."" Computing in Science & Engineering, 25(2), pp.50-56.
Harden, J., Christman, E., Kirshenbaum, N., Belcaid, M., Leigh, J. and North, C., 2023, April. “There is no reason anybody should be using 1D anymore”: Design and Evaluation of 2D Jupyter Notebooks. In Graphics Interface 2023-second deadline.
Roderick S Tabalba, Nurit Kirshenbaum, Jason Leigh, Abari Bhattacharya, Veronica Grosso, Barbara Di Eugenio, Andrew E Johnson, and Moira Zellner. 2023. "Investigation into an Always Listening Interface to Support Data Exploration." In Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI '23). ACM.
Harden, J., Christman, E., Kirshenbaum, N., Wenskovitch, J., Leigh, J. and North, C., 2022, September. "Exploring Organization of Computational Notebook Cells in 2D Space." In 2022 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC) (pp. 1-6). IEEE Computer Society.
Kirshenbaum, N., 2021. "Research through Design of Bendable Interactive Playing Cards " (Doctoral dissertation, University of Hawai'i at Manoa).
N. Kirshenbaum, K. Davidson, J. Harden, C. North, D. Kobayashi, R. Theriot, R. S. Tabalba, M. L. Rogers, M. Belcaid, A. T. Burks, K. N. Bharadwaj, L. Renambot, A. E. Johnson, L. Long, and J. Leigh. 2021. "Traces of Time through Space: Advantages of Creating Complex Canvases in Collaborative Meetings" in Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 5, ISS, Article 502 (November 2021), 20 pages.
D. Kobayashi, N. Kirshenbaum, R. S Tabalba, R. Theriot, and J. Leigh, "Translating The Benefits Of Wide-band Display Environments Into An XR Space" in Symposium on Spatial User Interaction, Article 9, pp. 1–11, ACM, 2021.
Bharadwaj, K., Burks, A., Johnson, A., Long, L., Renambot, L., Brown, M., Kobayashi, D., Belcaid, M., Kirshenbaum, N., Tabalba, R. and Theriot, R., 2021, December. "Securing Collaborative Work in Wide-band Display Environments" In 2021 IEEE 7th International Conference on Collaboration and Internet Computing (CIC) (pp. 26-34). IEEE.
B. Ens, B. Bach, M. Cordeil, U. Engelke, M. Serrano, W. Willett, A. Prouzeau, C. Anthes, W. Büschel, C. Dunne, T. Dwyer, J. Grubert, J. H. Haga, N. Kirshenbaum, D. Kobayashi, T. Lin, M. Olaosebikan, F. Pointecker, D. Saffo, N. Saquib, D. Schmalstieg, D. Albers Szafir, M. Whitlock, and Y. Yang, "Grand Challenges in Immersive Analytics" in Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2021, May 6, pp. 1-17, ACM, 2021.
N. Kirshenbaum, J. Hutchison, R. Theriot, D. Kobayashi, and J. Leigh, "Data in context: Engaging audiences with 3d physical geo-visualization" in Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2020, Honolulu, HI, USA, April 25-30, 2020, pp. 1–9, ACM, 2020.
D. Kobayashi, B. T. Wooton, N. Kirshenbaum, J. Leigh, and J. Haga, "Landsage: Collaborative large display systems for landslide response in southeast asia" in Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2020, Honolulu, HI, USA, April 25-30, 2020, pp. 1–9, ACM, 2020.
R. Theriot, J. Hutchison, N. Kirshenbaum, and J. Leigh, "Tailoring data visualization to diversely informed end users " in PEARC ’20: Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing, Portland, OR, USA, July 27-31, 2020, pp. 304–310, ACM, 2020.
A. G. Mart ́ınez, B. T. Wooton, N. Kirshenbaum, D. Kobayashi, and J. Leigh, "Exploring collections of research publications with human steerable AI " in PEARC ’20: Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing, Portland, OR, USA, July 27-31, 2020, pp. 339–348, ACM, 2020.
J. Leigh, K. Bharadwaj, A. Nishimoto, L. Long, J. Haga, J. Burns, F. Cristobal, J. McLean, R. Pelayo, M. Belcaid, D. Kobayashi, N. Kirshenbaum, T. Wooton, A. Gonzalez, L. Renambot, A. E. Johnson, M. D. Brown, and A. Burks, "Usage patterns of wideband display environments in e-science research, development and training " in 15th International Conference on eScience, eScience 2019, San Diego, CA, USA, September 24-27, 2019, pp. 301–310, IEEE, 2019.
N. Kirshenbaum, D. Kobayashi, A. G. Martinez, and J. Leigh, " On a side note: observations on using digital notes on a large display with users sitting at extreme sides" in Proceedings of the 8th ACM International Symposium on Pervasive Displays, PerDis 2019, Palermo, Italy, June 12-14, 2019, pp. 9:1–9:7, ACM, 2019.
N. Kirshenbaum and S. P. Robertson, "PEPA deck: Bringing interactivity to playing cards " in Proceedings of the 2018 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play Companion Extended Abstracts, CHI PLAY 2018, Melbourne, VIC, Australia, October 28-31, 2018, pp. 479–486, ACM, 2018.
N. Kirshenbaum, D. Kobayashi, R. Theriot, K. Noe, and J. Leigh, "Flying a broom in a hybrid reality room: Eliciting physical interaction " in Proceedings of the Symposium on Spatial User Interaction, SUI 2018, Berlin, Germany, October 13-14, 2018, p. 189, ACM, 2018. (Poster)
D. Kobayashi, M. Ready, A. G. Martinez, N. Kirshenbaum, T. Seto-Mook, J. Leigh, and J. Haga, "Sage river disaster information (sageRDI): Demonstrating application data sharing in SAGE2 " in Proceedings of the 2018 ACM International Conference on Interactive Surfaces and Spaces, ISS 2018, Tokyo, Japan, November 25-28, 2018, pp. 33–42, ACM, 2018.
N. Kirshenbaum and S. P. Robertson, "Define, refine, and identify events in a bendable interface " in Proceedings of the 2018 ACM International Conference on Interactive Surfaces and Spaces, ISS 2018, Tokyo, Japan, November 25-28, 2018, pp. 345–350, ACM, 2018.
N. Kirshenbaum and S. P. Robertson, "Set&motion: Tool for authoring interactive stories with sensors and actuators " in Proceedings of The 15th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, IDC ’16, Manchester, United Kingdom, June 21-24, 2016, pp. 554–559, ACM, 2016.