This group was started by John Smith, when he introduced Kevin Jeffay and Don Smith to the idea of CSCW (Computer Supported Cooperative Work). They have not since looked back, using collaboration as a driving problem for much of their research. This initial group developed the ABC collaboration framework, which includes a distributed, hypermedia file system and a distributed shared window system. ABC was supported by a special National Science Foundation program to investigate collaboration technology. This program also funded collaboration systems developed by Dave Stotts and Prasun Dewan, who were then at Maryland and Purdue, respectively, but soon saw the light and joined UNC. They, in turn, have contributed to the spreading of the word, especially to Jan Prins and Lars Nyland, who are the newest members of the group. We expect Jim Anderson and Sid Chatterjee to soon start looking seriously at this area. Hussein Abdel-Wahab has been working with the group since its inception as an adjunct faculty member. Some of the faculty members at other universities we collaborate with are Rick Furuta, John McHugh, and John Riedl. We are also working with Bill Oliver of AFIPS, who plans to be a client for much of the software we develop. The diversity of this group has put it in a unique position to comprehensively address the broad agenda of this interdisciplinary area.

Some of the Ph.D. students who have been led into working in this area are Goopeel Chung, Brian Ladd, John Menges, Eileen Kupstas, Jon Munson, and Jaime Navon. Be sure to look at their home pages to get an idea of the kinds of research topics they are investigating.