The aim of the WUC workshops is to foster transnational research collaborations in human-centered computing, human computer interaction, and ubiquitous computing. This workshop provides an informal, relaxing, and fun opportunity for researchers from Southern California and northern Baja California to to get to know one another and one another’s work. It is an excellent opportunity to receive feedback on research, meet potential collaborators, and build cross-institutional and international connections. Having been successfully held at a number of other institutions, it is now UC Irvine’s turn to host WUC!

Building Community

While previous workshops have worked to foster a community of researchers, our theme of “building community” encourages us to think about how our community might serve and address the needs of our larger communities — local, national, international, and digital. Computing can have a powerful impact for good, both in our local communities and in the creation of entirely new ones. We look forward to sharing and collaborating on projects that engage economic, educational, environmental, health, and social issues.

Goals of the Workshop

The aim of the WUC is to foster transnational research collaborations in human-computer interaction, ubicomp, and human-centered computing. Our specific goals for the WUC series include:

• Providing students an opportunity to present ongoing research through short talks, posters, and demonstrations and to elicit feedback from an audience of HCI, Ubicomp, and HCC researchers from both countries with a diversity of perspectives and expertise;
• Offering a forum for exploring shared research interests across institutions and labs through a combination of *short*, high-level overview presentations and more in-depth working groups; and
• Increasing awareness about some of the organizational resources that faculty members and students can use to establish new research collaborations between Mexican and American institutions and to seek funding support to expand existing research relationships;
• Provide opportunities for researchers from Southern California and northern Baja California to continue to get to know one another and one another’s work. We plan to have several social activities in conjunction with the workshop to strengthen the sense of community across our labs.

Organizers
Lizbeth Escobedo (UABC), Jed Brubaker (UCI)

Generous support provided by CCREC

We are extremely grateful to the support of the Center for Collaborative Research for an Equitable California. CCREC fosters a more equitable California by addressing the interconnected crises in the economy, education, employment, environment, health, housing, and nutrition. CREC links university researchers, community-based organizations, and policy makers in collaborative projects to achieve creative solutions to the problems in our communities. CCREC prepares a new generation of engaged scholars by coordinating and focusing University of California system-wide efforts to support collaborative research that makes a difference in our communities.