Whether V11n2 Newsflash 10researching the Romanov Dynasty or settling an argument over where Johnny Cash was born, people rely on Wikipedia to satisfy their intellectual inquiries. Online communities such as Wikipedia make up an increasing part of human interaction, and research on these communities helps programmers build better platforms. Haiyi Zhu, a CMU PhD student in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute, and two of her professors, Robert Kraut and Aniket Kittur, are contributing to that research. For their collaborative paper, “Effectiveness of Shared Leadership in Online Communities,” they’ve won the annual Human Factors Prize from The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, which has 67 active chapters throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe.
—Paul Carboni (DC’13)