Guy Pyrzak

Research Computer Scientist -- NASA

Academic Background

Master in Human-Computer Interaction, Carnegie Mellon University, 2005
B.S. in Computer Science, Louisiana State University, 2003

Research and Applied Work

Guy is a Research Computer Scientist in the Human-Computer Interaction Group at NASA Ames Research Center. He graduated from Louisiana State University with Bachelors of Science in Computer Science. After graduation Guy joined LSU’s Enterprise Solutions Group where he designed and developed web-based applications for the university.

While at Carnegie Mellon, Guy’s coursework included a nine-month project where he researched, designed and developed a planning tool for a simulation of robotic exploration with Alonso Vera, Mike McCurdy, and Chris Connors. During that time, Guy also contributed to designs for plan comparison.

Since joining the HCI Group in late 2005, he has continued working on space planning tools (SPIFe) and also contributes to several other Ensemble projects including problem reporting tools (ACES), data browsing (Maestro) and 3D visualizations (Viz). Guy also supports the delivery of mission software to both the Phoenix (PSI) and MSL(MSLICE) missions.

He has started research with Alonso Vera, Collin Green, Andrew Howes, and Rick Lewis on the development and application of the Constraint-based Optimal Reasoning Engine (CORE): a platform for modeling expert human performance being developed collaboratively by the HCI Group, the University of Michigan, Carnegie-Mellon University, and the University of Manchester (UK).

Recent Papers

Knight, A., Pyrzak, G., & Green, C. (2007). When two methods are better than one: Combining user study with cognitive modeling. Proceedings of ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 1783-1788.

McCurdy, M., Connors, C., Pyrzak, G., Kanefsky, B., & Vera, A. (2006). Breaking the fidelity barrier: An examination of current prototypes and an example of a mixed-fidelity success. Proceedings of ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI).