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Photo of Tracey Hughes<\/p>\n
Tracey Hughes \u201903, \u201908
\nTracey Hughes has a 100-piece-and-growing robot collection that lives on her office desk at home. She has two computer science degrees from YSU, is chief executive officer of CTEST Laboratories, a non-profit software research facility she founded with her husband, and a prolific co-author of computer programming and robotics books.
\nBut according to Hughes, she\u2019s not a typical \u201ccomputer person.\u201d
\n\u201cI\u2019m not the kind who lives for computers and considers nothing else,\u201d she said. \u201cI think we all have the responsibility to be involved with changing society no matter what our work is.\u201d
\nThat\u2019s the philosophy driving Hughes\u2019 professional aspirations to better her community with her groundbreaking software research.
\nShe began her research in the 1990s when she and her husband, Cameron \u2013 now a professional software developer and staff programmer\/analyst at YSU \u2013 moved here to begin working toward undergraduate degrees at YSU. Former high school sweethearts from Detroit, they had both earned associate degrees from Community College of Philadelphia and were already making plans to publish their first book on the computer programming language C++. Seven more books would follow.
\nUnlike their writing material, though, their research was focused less on programming practice and more on theory. For the past 20 years, Hughes and her husband have continued their work designing and implementing a knowledge representation scheme they call \u201cknowledge spaces.\u201d
\n\u201cOur research at CTEST Labs, and even when we were students at YSU, has been on computational epistemology\u2014or representing knowledge in the computer,\u201d said Hughes. \u201cWe investigate techniques in acquiring knowledge from different sources, representing it in software, and then analyzing the quality of the knowledge.\u201d
\nShe and Cameron create software that can reach conclusions about whether or not a proposition in a specific context is true \u2013 or, if it can be considered \u201cknowledge.\u201d Hughes explained that much of today\u2019s software extracts information, or facts, from text or documents rather than the supported knowledge she is attempting to represent with her software.
\nMuch of the data the couple gathers for their research comes from interrogative documents, such as court trial transcripts.
\n\u201cSay there\u2019s a trial transcript of a civil case against a cigarette manufacturer where the plaintiff claims cigarettes cause cancer,\u201d said Hughes. \u201cBoth sides bring in experts who present arguments to prove their side. We take the transcripts and extract the propositions. Our software can analyze the quality of each argument and determine which argument was supported.\u201d
\nIt\u2019s a concept that could have a major future impact on how documents can be analyzed and interpreted, but Hughes and her husband would like to use their software in the future to help non-profit organizations in the Youngstown area and beyond. \u201cI\u2019m not interested in making a billion bucks,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m more interested in solving problems for the greater good.\u201d
\nRight now, for example, they\u2019re applying data mining techniques and their epistemic structures to data they acquired from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, working to determine the relationship between fracking, a process used in oil and gas drilling, and earthquakes. Eventually, they want to create a website that would process data generated by Ohio government agencies for public use, and they can envision many applications stemming from their research.
\nHughes and Cameron live in Youngstown and have three children \u2013 two daughters and a son \u2013 and five grandchildren.
\n(Previously published in YSU Magazine, Fall 2012)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Photo of Tracey Hughes Tracey Hughes \u201903, \u201908 Tracey Hughes has a 100-piece-and-growing robot collection that lives on her office desk at home. She has two computer science degrees from YSU, is chief executive officer of CTEST Laboratories, a non-profit software research facility she founded with her husband, and a prolific co-author of computer programming […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":46,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-258","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n