Authors: Michael Zentner, Nathan Denny, Gerhard Klimeck, Ken Musselman, George Bunch Adams III

In the Spring of 2010 we became engaged with nanoHUB to help develop an understanding of the user activity on the site. After attempting several techniques for classifying user behaviors, it became apparent that a better understanding of this behavior from bulk characterizations down to the level of individual users was necessary. This work resulted in the development of custom visualization software and the application of commercial software that has been licensed for use in conjunction with the HUBs. Through using these software tools, we were able to understand nanoHUB user behavior at its lowest level, and subsequently successfully develop automatic user characterization methods based on those findings. These tools are now also being applied in catalyzeCare.org. However, in catalyzeCare the tools are not used for user behavior analysis. Rather, they are used by researchers to develop an understanding of hospital patient behavior and in particular regarding patients who visit a hospital multiple times, termed "readmissions." In this talk we discuss these tools and demonstrate their use in nanoHUB and catalyzeCare.

Michael Zentner is a Senior Research Scientist at the Rosen Center for Advanced Computing (RCAC) at Purdue University working on visualization and data analysis. Prior to joining Purdue, he was founder/senior team member of several information technology companies, where he created innovative solutions for extracting patterns from data, collaboration, and constrained optimization. Dr. Zentner has consulted with many Fortune 500 companies to apply these technologies for solving business problems including operations scheduling, strategic capital investment, process improvement, and new product innovation and creation.

Nathan T. Denny (Software Engineeer, Rosen Center for Advanced Computing, Purdue University) received his Master of Science in Computer Science from Southern Illinois University in 1998 and his Bachelors of Science in Computer Science and Mathematics from Southern Illinois University in 1997. He has a diverse background and has published in fields such as design for testability (DFT) of very large scale integrated circuits (VLSI), information re-use in case-based reasoning, Internet spam control, automation in agricultural irrigation, peer-to-peer networking, knowledge management in global software development, intelligent human-machine interfaces, and simulations in social sciences. He currently works with the HubZero group at the Rosen Center for Advanced Computing where he contributes to statistics, datagraphics, and visualization.

Ken Musselman

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Michael Zentner; Nathan Travis Denny; Gerhard Klimeck; George B. Adams III (2011), "Applications for Interactive Behavior Exploration," https://help.hubzero.org/resources/423.

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