RESEARCH INTERESTS AND QUESTIONS

Health Communication

· HIV prevention intervention design and evaluation

· Socially Optimized Learning in Virtual Environments (SOLVE)

· Drug and alcohol use and sexual risk taking

· Developmental factors in risk-taking

· The role of cognitive and non-cognitive factors in risk-taking

· Message framing

· Possible selves

Culture, Communication & technology 

· Modeling realistic personality in virtual agents

· Pedagogical agents in virtual environments

· Interactive media as an unobtrusive behavioral measure

· Narrative, presence, and immersive tendencies

 Communication Law & Public Policy

· The role regulation plays in fostering/hindering technological innovation

· Media convergence and conglomeration as threats to alternate  viewpoints

 Philosophy of Communication

 · How does controlling objects through technology distort the subject?

·  What role does a researcher’s philosophy of technology play in the research questions that are ultimately posed?