Research

My work is grounded in socio-technical systems theory and takes place at the intersection between human computer interaction, software engineering and information systems. It extends into two main areas: (1) fostering participation and sustaining outcomes of short-term collaboration and (2) fostering deviation in structured processes. I follow a mixed-method approach that combines qualitative social research methods such as interviews, questionnaires, and observations with quantitative methods such as machine learning, data mining and hypothesis testing.

Participation and sustainability of short-term collaboration

I study the implications of participatory IT design in innovative and contemporary settings such as hackathons - a novel socio-technical form of collaboration. One of my goals here is to explore how the socio-technical design of hackathons can impact their sustainability. Sustainability in this case can refer to e.g. the development of innovative products, the transfer of knowledge, or the involvement of new community members. Based on the results of my research, I have developed a multi-level methodological open-source framework to help hackathon planners navigate design decisions (hackathon-planning-kit.org).

Deviation in structured processes

I focus on supporting individuals, teams, and organizations to improve their processes in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, user experience and purposeful use of IT through deviation. For this purpose, I have developed socio-technical heuristics that allow stakeholders to quickly assess their current state of collaboration, identify problems and develop improvements. In addition, I explore the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to automatically assess the state of collaboration and automatically propose deviating suggestions to optimize process performance. In particular, I am interested in developing understandable representations of AI outputs that stakeholders trust and incorporate into their decision making. In this context I have aided the development of RuM (rulemining.org/) - an open-source toolkit for declarative process mining.

The following timeline illustrates my academic career. For more information please refer to my resume or contact me directly.

Career timeline

2020

Associate Professor – University of Tartu, Estonia

Adjunct Associate Professor – Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA

2018

Lecturer (Assistant Professor) – University of Tartu, Estonia

Adjunct Assistant Professor – Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA

Hackathon consultant, facilitator and coach

2017

Research associate – Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA

Postdoctoral fellow – University of Pittsburgh, USA

Adjunct faculty – University of Pittsburgh, USA

2016

Visiting research fellow – University of Pittsburgh, USA

Temporary research programmer – Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA

Online tutor – EURO-FH University of Applied Sciences, Hamburg, Germany

2015

Postdoctoral research fellow – Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany

2013

Visiting research fellow – Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia

2011

Process management consultant and coach

2009

Researcher and PhD student – Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany

2008

Co-founder and front-end developer – RWTH Aachen University / fromatob.com, Germany

2004

Student assistant and developer – Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany

2001

Student assistant and developer – Technical University Dortmund, Germany


Publications

For a complete list of my publications please refer to my Google Scholar profile.

Journals

  • Kubrak, K., Milani, F. & Nolte, A. (2023). A visual approach to support process analysts in working with process improvement opportunities. Business Process Management Journal 29, 8, 101-132. (PDF)
  • Imam Mahmoud, A., Dey, T., Nolte, A., Mockus, A. & Herbsleb, J. D. (2022). One-off events? An empirical study of hackathon code creation and reuse. Empirical Software Engineering 27. (PDF)
  • Jahnke, I., Meinke-Kroll, M., Todd, M., & Nolte, A. (2022). Exploring Artifact‑Generated Learning with Digital Technologies: Advancing Active Learning with Co‑design in Higher Education Across Disciplines. Technology, Knowledge and Learning 27, 335–364. (PDF)
  • Kubrak, K., Milani, F., Nolte, A. & Dumas, M. (2022). Prescriptive Process Monitoring: Quo Vadis? PeerJ Computer Science 8, e1097. (PDF)
  • Mendes, W., Richard, A., Tillo, T.-K., Pinto, G., Gama, K. & Nolte, A. (2022) Socio-Technical Constraints and Affordances of Virtual Collaboration - A Study of Four Online Hackathons. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 6, CSCW2, 1-32. (PDF)
  • Pe-Than, E. P. P., Nolte, A., Filippova, A., Bird, C., Scallen, S., & Herbsleb, J. D. (2022). Corporate Hackathons, How and Why? A multiple case study of motivation, project proposal and selection, goal setting, coordination, and project continuation. Human-Computer Interaction. (PDF)
  • Herrmann, T., Jahnke, I., & Nolte, A. (2021). A problem-based approach to the advancement of heuristics for socio-technical evaluation. Behaviour & Information Technology, 23 pages. (PDF)
  • Nolte, A., Chounta, I.-A., & Herbsleb, J. D. (2020). What Happens to All These Hackathon Projects? - Identifying Factors to Promote Hackathon Project Continuation. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 4, CSCW2, Article 145 (October 2020), 26 pages. (PDF, video)
  • Nolte, A., Hayden, L. B., & Herbsleb, J. D. (2020). How to Support Newcomers in Scientific Hackathons - An Action Research Study on Expert Mentoring. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 4, CSCW1, Article 25 (May 2020), 23 pages. (PDF, video)
  • Pe-Than, E. P. P., Nolte, A., Filippova, A., Bird, C., Scallen, S., & Herbsleb, J. D. (2019). Designing Corporate Hackathons With a Purpose. IEEE Software 36, 1, 15-22. (PDF, Runner-up for 2019 Best Paper Award)
  • Nolte, A., Pe-Than, E. P. P., Filippova, A., Bird, C., Scallen, S., & Herbsleb, J. D. (2018). You Hacked and Now What? - Exploring Outcomes of a Corporate Hackathon. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 2, CSCW, 129:1-129:23. (PDF, Slides)

Conferences

  • Kubrak, K., Milani, F., Nolte, A. & Dumas, M.(2023). Design and Evaluation of a User Interface Concept for Prescriptive Process Monitoring. In: International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (pp. 347-363). (PDF)
  • Affia, A. O., Nolte, A., & Matulevičius, M. (2022). Integrating Hackathons into an Online Cybersecurity Course. In: 44th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training (ICSE-SEET '22). (PDF)
  • Chounta, I.-A., & Nolte, A. (2022). The CAT Effect: Exploring the Impact of Casual Affective Triggers on Online Surveys' Response Rates. In: Proceedings of the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (13 pages). (PDF)
  • Imam, A., Dey, T., Nolte, A., Mockus, A. & Herbsleb, J. D. (2021). The Secret Life of Hackathon Code – Where does it come from and where does it go?. In: Proceedings of the 2021 IEEE/ACM 18th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (pp. 68-79). (PDF, video)
  • Oidekivi, M., Dey, T., Nolte, A., Aabloo, A., & Kruusamäe, K. (2021). Interpreting externally expressed intentions of an autonomous vehicle. In: Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Human System Interaction (pp. 116-121). (PDF, Best Paper Award)
  • Alman, A., Di Ciccio, C., Haas, D., Maggi, F. M., & Nolte, A. (2020) Rule Mining with RuM. In: 2nd International Conference on Process Mining (pp. 114-121). Springer. (PDF)
  • Medina Angarita, M. A. & Nolte, A. (2020) What do we know about hackathon outcomes and how to support them? – A systematic literature review. In: Collaboration Technologies and Social Computing (pp. 50-64). Springer. (PDF)
  • Qiu, H. S., Nolte, A., Brown, A., Serebrenik, A.,, & Vasilescu, B. (2019). Going Farther Together: The Impact of Social Capital on Sustained Participation in Open Source. In: ICSE '19: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Software Engineering. (PDF, ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award)
  • Herrmann, T., Nolte, A., & Prilla, M. (2016). Socio-technical Process Design — The Case of Coordinated Service Delivery for Elderly People. In: Blurring the Boundaries Through Digital Innovation (pp. 217-229). Springer. (PDF, Special award Sandro D’Atri)

Workshops

  • Paganini, L., Gama, K., Nolte, A. & Serebrenik, A. (2023). Opportunities and constraints of women-focused online hackathons. Fourth Workshop on Gender Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Software Engineering. (PDF)
  • Leemet, A., Milani, F., & Nolte, A. (2021). Utilizing Hackathons to Foster Sustainable Product Innovation - The Case of a Corporate Hackathon Series. In: Proceedings of the 2021 IEEE/ACM 13th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (pp. 51-60). (PDF, video)
  • Nolte, A., Pe-Than, E. P. P., Affia, A. O., Chaihirunkarn, C., Filippova, A., Kalyanasundaram, A., Medina Angarita, M. A., Trainer, E., & Herbsleb, J. D. (2020). How to organize a hackathon - A planning kit. arXiv preprint arXiv:2008.08025. (PDF)
  • Nolte, A. (2019). Touched by the Hackathon: A Study on the Connection between Hackathon Participants and Start-Up Founders. In: International Workshop on Software-intensive Business 2019: Start-ups, Ecosystems and Platforms (IWSiB 2019) (pp. 31-36). ACM. (PDF, Slides)

Teaching

Undergraduate

LTAT.05.007 Human Computer Interaction – Lecturer
University of Tartu (Spring 2019 to present, sample syllabus)

INFSCI 1017 Implementation of Information Systems – Lecturer
University of Pittsburgh (Spring 2017, sample syllabus)

Project Management – Lecturer
Ruhr-University Bochum (Summer 2016)

Project Management – Co-Lecturer
Ruhr-University Bochum (Summer 2015)

Software Engineering – Co-Lecturer
Ruhr-University Bochum (Summer 2015)

Project Management – Co-Lecturer
Ruhr-University Bochum (Summer 2015)

Graduate

LTAT.05.007 Human Computer Interaction – Lecturer
University of Tartu (Autumn 2018 to present, sample syllabus)

LTAT.05.019 Digital Product Management Industry Project – Lecturer
University of Tartu (Autumn 2018 to present)

LTAT.05.011 Digital Product Design Introductory Project – Lecturer
University of Tartu (Autumn 2018 to 2021)

Information Management – Online Tutor
EURO-FH University of Applied Sciences Hamburg (Winter 2016)

Business Engineering – Online Tutor
EURO-FH University of Applied Sciences Hamburg (Winter 2016)

Process Management and Innovation – Co-Lecturer
Ruhr-University Bochum (Summer 2014 to 2016)

Project Management – Co-Lecturer
Ruhr-University Bochum (Summer 2015)

Subject-driven role-guided externalization of organizational models – Co-Lecturer
JKU Linz (ERASMUS Summer School 2014, Sample slides on process modeling fundamentals)

Subject-driven role-guided externalization of organizational models – Co-Lecturer
JKU Linz (ERASMUS Summer School 2013)

Fellowships & Grants

Author and principal investigator of the Research project Socio-technical orchestration for hybrid hackathons – A pilot project funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (2023 to 2024).

Co-PI of the Research project Studying Hackathons & other open- innovation grassroots events to understand their role and impact in boosting entrepreneurship in cultural & creative industries funded by the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media (2023).

Co-author and Community Outreach and Engagement Director of the CISE Community Research Infrastructure project World of Code (WoC): The Development of a Curated Code Resource to Support Research in Software Engineering funded by the National Science Foundation (2021 to 2024).

Recipient of support for the Organization of the workshop series Hack the Hackathon: Shaping the Future of Hackathon Research and Practice at the Lorentz Center, Leiden, The Netherlands, December 2021, at the Flatiron Institute, New York, USA, October 2022, and at the SDG Solution Space, Geneva, Switzerland, November 2023 funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media.

Co-author and senior personnel (WP lead) of the Research project Prescriptive Monitoring of Business Processes funded by the Estonian Research Council (2020 to 2025)

Co-author and senior personnel (WP lead) of the Research project Applied Research on Development of Autonomous Driving Lab for Level 4 Autonomy funded by the Estonian Research Council under the NUTIKAS program (2019 to 2021)

Recipient of a Research fellowship by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) on Supporting sustained collaboration over time in hybrid collocated and online settings at the School of Information Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA (2017 to 2019)

Co-author and senior personnel (WP lead) of the Research project Kompetenzorientiertes Unternehmenscoaching für ein nachhaltiges Kompetenzmanagement in KMU (4C4Learn) funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) (2013 to 2017)

Recipient of a Scholarship by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) for a short term research visit to the Information Systems School at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia (February to May 2013)

Recipient of an eXist Business Start-up Grant by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) for the development of an online travel platform (fromatob.com, defunct) in cooperation with RWTH Aachen University, Germany (2008)