Faculty & Research

Education

Ph.D. Information Sciences and Technology, The Pennsylvania State University (2008)
M.S. Multimedia Technology, Duquesne University (2001)
B.A. Visual Arts in Photography, The Pennsylvania State University (1995)

Research Interests

• Psychology of technology
• Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), particularly distributed decision-making
• Communication technology and collaborative systems design
• New Media

Mark Pfaff is an Assistant Professor in the Indiana University School of Informatics (Indianapolis). His research explores the intersections of people, information, and technology in computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) environments through the use of experimental simulations and mixed-methodological approaches. Mark’s background in visual and interactive design draws from a Master’s degree in multimedia technology and a Bachelor’s degree in visual arts. He also spent several years in Pittsburgh, PA running a recording studio and working as a free-lance electric and upright bass player.

His research has been presented at the Human Factors and Engineering Society, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, and the Association for Psychological Science. Mark is formerly an instructor in the Interactive Media department at Duquesne University where he taught multimedia development, Web design, human-computer interaction (HCI), and sound design. Mark received his Ph.D. in 2008 from the College of Information Sciences and Technology at the Pennsylvania State University. At Penn State he managed the User Science and Engineering Lab at IST and was a research assistant for both the Multidisciplinary Initiatives in Naturalistic Decision Systems (MINDS) Group and the Center for Network-Centric Cognition and Information Fusion (NC2IF).