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Usability Professionals' Association
Southeast Michigan Chapter (MI UPA)
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MI UPA Officer Elections

Thanks to all attendees and members of the Southeast Michigan Chapter of UPA for making our second year successful. Now it's time to hold elections! The following five officer positions exist to "share the load" of running the chapter.

President
Responsible for communicating with headquarters, holding officer meetings regularly, brainstorming meeting topics and hosting locations with the other officers, supporting other officers where needed, and being "cheerful ambassador" of usability to southeast Michigan.

Program Director
Responsible for obtaining speakers for meetings and facilitating their travel plans, as well as finding locations that will host meetings.

Treasurer
Responsible for collecting and tracking membership dues, and maintaining a list of members in and out of good standing. Report chapter finances at each officer meeting and keep all receipts and ledgers accurately. Run registration table at meetings with Secretary.

Secretary
Responsible for keeping minutes of all officer meetings and assisting Treasurer at the registration table at meetings. Help with food arrangements and chapter promotions.

Public Relations



Nominees:

Yelena Babin
Yelena Babin is a graphic designer with an emphasis on usability at Compuware. She holds a Bachelor's of Fine Arts degree in Graphic Design from the University of Michigan. Her background includes extensive work as a graphic and web designer in a variety or industries, but her main interest and expertise is in web and user interface design. Yelena began her involvement with the Michigan UPA as a presenter and has served as an officer for the past year.

Magelone Bollen
Magelone Bollen works as a Usability Specialist at TechSmith Corp., Okemos, since 2003. She conducts usability tests and reviews for Techsmith's software products and web site, and she is involved in the actual UI design as well.

David Mitropoulos-Rundus
Dave Mitropoulos-Rundus is responsible for driving usability improvement, user interface standardization, and 508 accessibility compliance across Compuware's products. He has held usability management, consulting, and sales positions in product development and in the external consulting organization at Compuware. Prior to joining Compuware, Dave was a Human Factors Engineer for Eastman Kodak. Dave has designed user interfaces for hand-helds, kiosks, Web sites, and production machines, and has conducted evaluations in the lab, on the Web, in the field, and in the homes of consumers. Dave is a frequent conference presenter and user interface design instructor, and is a chapter author of the book, "Design by People for People: Essays in Usability". Dave has a Master's degree in Human Factors Psychology from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Dave is an active member of HFES, ACM SIG-CHI, and the Usability Professionals' Association (UPA). He is currently on the UPA Board of Directors and is an officer of the Michigan UPA and Detroit's UXNet.

Sumanth Muthyala
Sumanth has been involved with design of Web based applications and Windows applications since he began with Compuware in early 2001. He has been extensively involved in creation, navigation design, look and feel, and negotiating the trade-offs and compromises that must be made to achieve reasonable and feasible designs. Sumanth has conducted user analyses, detailed design specifications for user interfaces, and extensive usability testing in the controlled environment of a usability lab, and remotely as well. Sumanth holds a Master's degree in Industrial Engineering and a Bachelor's degree in Instrumentation Engineering. He is a member of the Human Factors and the Ergonomics Society, UPA, and a Michigan UPA Chapter officer. In completing his Master's, Sumanth studied human factors, usability testing, design of human computer systems, design and analysis of human-machine systems, and qualitative and quantitative experimental design and analysis methods. He also gained a theoretical grounding in human factors and usability testing methods.

Jacqueline A. Chestnut
Dr. Jacqueline Chestnut is a native of Reidsville, North Carolina. She received both a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science degree in Industrial Engineering from North Carolina A&T University in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1983 and 1994 respectively. In 2000, she became the first African-American to receive a doctorate degree in Engineering in the state of Mississippi when she successfully completed her dissertation entitled "Human Error in Information Security Incidents: Assessing Human Impact on Information Security."

As a graduate student at MSU, Dr. Chestnut worked diligently to contribute to Mississippi State University's mission of teaching, research, and service. She worked as a laboratory instructor for two years and was committed to demonstrating excellence in the classroom to ensure the development of bright young minds that will assume positions of leadership in the Engineering community.

Dr. Chestnut also worked as a research assistant in the Department of Industrial Engineering and was a member of the MSU Ergonomics Research Team for four years (serving as team leader for two years). During her affiliation with the research team, Dr. Chestnut published several scholarly publications and traveled the country presenting her research findings at professional conferences. In addition, she performed ergonomic training and workplace evaluations for companies across the state of Mississippi including Delta Pride, Bryan Foods and Garan Manufacturing, Inc.

Dr. Chestnut actively participated in mentoring programs in local elementary and high schools. She also served as a mentor during the summer programs for high school students interested in science and engineering, including the NSBE University Familiarization Program for Minorities in Engineering (UFPME), and MSU IMAGE (Increasing Minority Access to Graduate Education) program.

Currently, Dr. Chestnut is employed with General Motors as a Human Factors Engineer in Warren, Michigan. Her primary responsibilities include providing human factors expertise for infotainment systems across all GM vehicles; the development of infotainment design objectives and guidelines manual; providing Analysis, Development, Validation for Infotainment and evaluation, participating in the Human Vehicle Interface Work Teams, driver workload and usability analysis. As infotainment lead on a special assignment Dr. Chestnut is co-author of two pending patents. In addition, she developed a new GM usability test methodology. In recognition of her contributions to the company, Dr. Chestnut recently received a GM Employee Award as well as the GM African-American Engineering Advanced Degree Recognition Certificate in 2001. Most recently, Dr. Chestnut received a certificate from the Global Interface Foreign Language Training program for successfully completing the requirements of a Chinese I course. Dr. Chestnut successfully completed the requirements for Green Belt Design for Six Sigma.

Her current activities and affiliations include: active membership in the Greater Grace Temple of the Apostolic Faith in Detroit, Michigan; Moderator for General Motors Technical Education Program for an Industrial Engineering Human Factors course offered through Purdue University for two semesters; team captain for The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation's (JDRF) "Walk To Cure Diabetes"; secretary for the North Carolina A&T State University Detroit Alumni Association; past mentor for the Don Bosco Hall Adult Mentoring Program; and member of the General Motors A frican-American Engineering Network (AAEN). Her professional memberships include Institute of Industrial Engineers, Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, and Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE).

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