Sharon Ferguson

Sharon Ferguson

PhD Candidate in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto

About Me

I am a 4th year Ph.D. candidate at the University of Toronto. I work at the Ready Lab under Dr. Alison Olechowski and I am also a graduate affiliate (and previously a graduate fellow) with the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. My doctoral work is supported by the National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC). I was formerly a graduate research fellow at the university’s Centre for Ethics, Ethics of AI lab from 2021-2022. In summer 2023, I interned on Slack’s Future of Work research team, studying meeting-free weeks and asynchronous attention negotiation.

My research looks at how engineers are using new enterprise communication tools such as Slack and Microsoft Teams, and how we can use natural language processing tools and the mass amounts of digital trace data that are created every day to learn about engineering design. I have looked at how we can identify cycles of convergence and divergence within the engineering design process using Topic Modelling. I have analyzed Slack communication using a gender lens, investigating the gendered communication patterns and engagement on these platforms, which was recently presented at CSCW 2023. In the engineering design space, I have investigated how, why, and when conflict happens in design teams using these platforms, and under what circumstances does it lead to improved innovation. Moving forward, I plan to investigate how Psychological Safety and shared language are enacted on Slack.

I also work as a research assistant under Dr. Anastasia Kuzminykh at the COoKIE Group investigating explanations human-AI collaboration in subjective decision making. We presented our work “Something Borrowed: Exploring the Influence of AI-Generated Explanation Text on the Composition of Human Explanations” at the CHI 2023 conference in Hamburg, Germany.

I also lead a project investigating student persistence in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, supported by the Ethics of AI lab at University of Toronto’s Centre for Ethics. I presented the first part of this project at the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Conference in June 2022, and you can see a summary of this work in video form or podcast form. An interview-based follow-up of this work was published in ASEE 2023 and can be found here.

I am passionate about increasing diversity in Engineering, and served as the President of the Graduate Society of Women Engineers in 2022-2023, after serving as the Vice President of Finance from 2021-2022.

I hold a Bachelor of Applied Science in Industrial Engineering from the University of Toronto, and have work experience in the energy industry.

News

  • January 2024: Our paper “The Effect of Meeting-Free Weeks on Distributed Workers’ Unstructured Time and Attention Negotiation” which was completed during my internship in the Future of Work department at Slack was accepted to CHI 2024!
  • January 2024: I am teaching MIE459: Organization Design in the department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering this semester
  • December 2023: I was awarded the NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship - Michael Smith Foreign Study Supplement award for a study abroad at MIT
  • October 2023: I will present my work on gendered communication patterns and engagement on Slack at CSCW 2023!
  • July 2023: Out work on conflict on Enterprise Communication Platforms was published in and presented at the International Conference on Engineering Design
  • June 2023: I won the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Teaching Assistant Award for 2022-2023
  • June 2023: Our work on Social Belonging Confidence in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence students was presented at the American Society of Engineering Education Annual Conference 2023
  • June 2023: Our work on remote work in the aerospace industry was published in Systems Engineering
  • June 2023: I will start my role as a Future of Work PhD Reserarch Intern at Slack!
  • April 2023: We will be presenting a poster at CHI 2023 in Hamburg, Germany!
  • March 2023: Our paper “Are We Equal Online?: An Investigation of Gendered Language Patterns and Message Engagement on Enterprise Communication Platforms” was accepted to the 2023 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW).
  • February 2023: Our late-breaking work paper “Something Borrowed: Exploring the Influence of AI-Generated Explanation Text on the Composition of Human Explanations” was accepted to the 2023 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) conference.
  • February 2023: Our paper “Let’s take this offline: a thematic analysis of virtual conflict in hybrid collaborative design teams” was accepted to the International Conference on Engineering Design 2023 Conference.
  • January 2023: I presented a poster entitled “Measuring Gendered Communication Patterns on Enterprise Communication Platforms” at the 2023 ACM Conference on Supporting Group Work.
  • December 2022: We are presenting our comparative analysis of human and AI explanation text at the Neurips Workshop on Human Centered AI on December 9th.
  • November 2022: I gave a talk on hybrid and virtual engineering communication at the ILead Community of Practice Conference.
  • November 2022: Our short paper “Measuring Gendered Communication Patterns on Enterprise Communication Platforms” was accepted as a poster for the ACM Conference on Group Work in January 2023. Read it here
  • June 2022: Our paper “Communication Patterns in Engineering Enterprise Social Networks: An Exploratory Analysis using Short Text Topic Modelling” is now live online! Read it here.
  • June 2022: I was selected as a Graduate Fellow at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. Read about this year’s cohort here.
  • May 2022: My paper “‘Why couldn’t we do this more often?’: Exploring the Feasibility of Virtual and Distributed Work for Product Design Engineers” was accepted for publication in Research in Engineering Design
  • April 2022: I was awarded a Canada Graduate Scholarship - Doctoral from NSERC
  • March 2022: I was invited to present a talk titled “Advancing a Model of Students’ Intentional Persistence in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence” at the Centre for Ethics, Ethics of AI in Context: Emerging Scholars speaker series
  • March 2022: My paper “Advancing a Model of Students’ Intentional Persistence in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence” was accepted for publication at the 2022 American Society of Engineering Education Conference
  • March 2022: My paper “Communication Patterns in Engineering Enterprise Social Networks: An Exploratory Analysis using Short Text Topic Modelling” was accepted for publication in Design Science
  • July 2021: I was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Graduate Scholarship in Science and Technology
  • July 2021: My presentation “Exploring Short Text Topic Models in the Context of Product Design Enterprise Social Network Messaging” won first place in the Data Analytics, AI, and Robotics section of the University of Toronto Engineering Research Conference
  • June 2021: I was selected as an Ethics of AI Graduate Research Fellow at the University of Toronto Centre for Ethics
  • May 2021: I was selected to participate in the first annual Toronto Human-AI Interaction Summer Research School held by the Faculty of Information