Hi everyone!

My name is Jean-Philippe Rancy and I am originally from Queens, N.Y., but moved to Syracuse in 2012. I am currently pursuing a doctorate degree at the iSchool at Syracuse University in Syracuse, N.Y. My research areas currently lie in Human-Computer Interaction and Management Information Systems, and I am hoping to study the phenomena of human immersion with technology via visualization mechanisms, such as Augmented Reality. I currently hold a Bachelors of Science in Business Management and Information Systems, and a Masters of Science in Information Systems, both from Le Moyne College. My passions are in information technology, cloud computing infrastructures, and technology infrastructure design with the hopes of researching and developing new methods and technologies to enhance the quality of life, values, and efficiency regarding the interaction between a human operator and machinery.

I currently assist at Le Moyne College as a mentor in the Information Systems department, as well as serve on multiple research teams for Le Moyne’s McDevitt Research Foundation to aid students in preparing for literature dissemination, publications, and thesis defense.

Life Hobbies and Activities:

During my downtime, I love to play the piano and write music, though I haven’t done much of that recently! As a hobby, I often develop simple applications and quick automated solutions on cloud development servers. I also love to play volleyball, watch musicals, and travel, and I sometimes find myself web designing for fun (I hope you enjoy this web experience)! My guilty pleasure (and often my weakness) is that I am a gadget enthusiast. Most recently, I have gotten into Smart-Home IoT products, i.e., Alexa and Google Home, and have been building automated tasks to make my daily work-flows faster. In my research, I play with wearables (Google Glass, Vuzix), Augmented Reality, and visualization gadgets.

My Passions and Technological Journey

My passions rest mainly in the realm of Information Technology and systems design. My experiences thus far have exposed me to skills in software development, system/server administration, and web development. What I love to do is play with technology and then, if possible, reinvent the ways we use or design technology for more efficient outcomes. I started off originally as a web designer, during the time when Microsoft Frontpage was the go-to product. I offered community service to local organizations, parishes, and even my elementary/high school performing tasks such as redesigning their websites and tier 1 level IT support with their computers (you might be to highlight the evolution of my web-design skills looking at those examples). In my high school, I started honing in on my technical abilities and expanded beyond web-design into actual IT troubleshooting and installation. From various internship opportunities all over NYC/Long Island, I was able to get hands-on experience with server creation, education technology administration, and even theatrical technology.

Fast-forward to my undergraduate years when I worked at Le Moyne College in their IT department and had the opportunity to really exercise and expand my skills. Working at their I.T. service desk for a few years, I was able to practice what I know and really have the pleasure of experiencing customer service first-hand. (In I.T., I’ll tell you, while there are some positives, I experienced MANY negative customer service experiences.) Nonetheless, to this day I very much miss that hands-on, face-to-face interaction. My experience at the service desk also allowed me to learn some mentorship skills in teaching others how to analyze, troubleshoot, and re-mediate common computer problems. Around the tail-end of my sophomore year through my master’s degree, my technological passions really came to fruition. I moved from working at the service desk to a higher tier position as an intern in the Systems Administration department. In that department, I was really able to exercise more of my technical ability, and was mentored by a fantastic team of admins in learning new server administration abilities and IT strategies. I won’t explain it here since this is a literature review bio (Ph.D. joke), however, feel free to look at my CV, which highlights what I did and the skills I learned.

Around the same time, I became involved with the Information Systems major and curricula at the Madden School of Business in Le Moyne. I knew I had found my home the moment I took my first class in this subject area. My experience in the IS realm is what led me to undergraduate research. In my undergraduate research days, we were looking into “emergent/infant” technologies such as Google Glass (this was before it really hit the shelves). Initially, playing with Glass was very different, since I was still new to Android, and had only the slightest of programming experience beyond BASIC/C++. That was a great learning curve to overcome in a very short amount of time! My undergraduate research led me to create a virtualization application for Glass. In other words, imagine using your operating system on your face with these glasses. That was a great hands-on experience without much pressure, since I was following the words of my mentor to “Go play.” A new and meaningful purpose was added to that research in my senior years of my undergraduate degree through my master’s degree. I was invited to join a research team to investigate ways to use Google Glass or any immersive platform to serve a purpose in assisting in safety-critical systems. To be specific, the use-case in this research scenario was maritime systems, however, the research can be expanded to different domains. The first part of this experience was to perform a literature review and survey to the technical and human factors aspect of safety-critical systems in a maritime bridge system. I traveled to many conferences and simulators (Tasmania, Australia/MITAGS Maryland, US/SUNY Maritime, Bronx, NY) to gain a user-centered idea on technical-use and importantly, technology coordination on ship bridge. My honors thesis in my undergraduate degree led to a concept application called “GlassNav,” which could bridge the use of Augmented Reality via Google Glass to assist in maritime navigation.

The journey was far from over there… My master’s degree led to designing and prototyping a system that could possibly be implemented GLOBALLY AND UNIVERSALLY in any bridge navigation system. This required extensive research and the creation of a technical requirement design, where we could re-evaluate standards and possibly create a universal standard for application implementation of AR in these legacy technological systems. This experience led me to create a technical design, evaluate it, and even to develop the first initial version of GlassNav. This proof of concept was completed and successfully implemented in the MITAGS maritime simulator in Baltimore, Maryland. Since then, the application has been used for various research variable studies (including my most recent endeavors) and led to a creation of a universal AR implementation protocol (agnostic of the domain), which I defended as my master’s thesis. From this I gained experience in system design, analysis, implementation strategies, and database properties, which manifested in my MIS research area. My experience in immersion, wearable technology, human-factor designs, UX/UI evaluation, and human-interface communication led to my interest in HCI. I was accepted to the doctoral program in Information Science and Technology at Syracuse University with the hopes of applying theory to my research practice, in order to meaningfully contribute to the research community.

That’s my technical autobiography! Congrats if you read all the way to this point! I love my research projects and am excited to join the Syracuse University iSchool doctoral cohort! If you have any questions, comments, or want to talk about anything, please shoot me an email at jrancy@syr.edu. It will be a pleasure to make your acquaintance.