The Emergence of A Peer Relationship in E-mail: A Longitudinal Study of a Student-Advisor Relationship

During the short handful of decades of its existence, the role of e-mail in society has quickly evolved. Initially, it aided in persisting asynchronous conversations across global distances. However, its nearly universal adoption and integration into both personal and work life necessitated information management technologies that alleviate the burden of dealing with quantities of e-mail – especially in time-critical scenarios. The RADAR project (Freed et al., 2008), of which Jaime G. Carbonell was one of the key leaders, was a major research project at Carnegie Mellon that recognized reducing e-mail overload required a holistic approach that integrated task management with e-mail, had the ability to recognize and prioritize new and ongoing requests, could perform automated planning to implicitly resolve contention for multiple resources (e.g., rooms, equipment), would take proactive action on implicit requests, etc.. The project naturally benefited from Professor Carbonell’s previous research experience – including text analysis, machine learning, information retrieval, and automated planning.