I am an Assistant Professor in the The Information School at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I co-direct the Collaborative Computing Group. I am also a faculty affiliate in the UW-Madison Robert & Jean Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies and the UW-Madison Institute for Diversity Science. I received a PhD in Information Science and Technology (2019) from the Information School at Syracuse University. After my PhD, I spent one year as a teaching postdoc in Berkeley’s Master’s in Data Science (MIDS) program.
My area of research lies at the intersection of Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) and human-centered design/computing. My work investigates the approaches to enhancing contribution by crowds in online environments. Using mixed-methods approaches and data science techniques, I investigations how people (‘‘the crowd’’) contributes to and participates in virtual citizen science. Prior research projects have included: studying the motivations of volunteer crowd workers, investigating learning behaviors, using theory-based motivational cues to enhance pariticpation, and investigating the coordinative mechanisms of knowledge production.
Ongoing research considers approaches to diversity the crowd in various contexts. This work involves research using participatory design to re-imagine how new systems and digital tools might enhance approaches to involve underrepresented groups in informing and shaping environmental policy. Additional projects focus on approaches to enhance and diversify definitions of fairness in machine learning audits.
My research has been published in leading conferences and journals in HCI such as ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work And Social Computing, the Journal of the Association for Information Systems, and Computers in Human Behavior. The research has been funded by the National Science Foundation (HCC), the Rockefeller Foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and the UW-Madison Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education.
Check out my Current Projects
[Nov. 2023] Our poster, “Learning About Life in the US: A Pilot Study on the Information Behavior of Nigerian Diasporan” has been accepted for presentation at iConference 2024
[Nov. 2023] Our paper, “How Personal Value Orientations Influence on Behaviors in Digital Citizen Science” has been accepted to CSCW 2024
[Nov. 2023] Research with my collaborator Kaiping Chen is highlighted in the November issue of Jottings - Research spotlight: Harnessing community and technology for equitable environmental policy
[Oct. 2023] Our position paper entitled “Re-imagining Fairness in Machine Learning: A Framework for Building in Socio-cultural and Contextual Awareness” (with Tallal Ahmad and Devansh Saxena) will be presented in the Supporting User Engagement in Testing, Auditing, and Contesting AI workshop at CSCW 2023.
[June. 2023] I presented our paper (with UW iSchool Phd student co-authors Ellie Jeong and Tallal Ahmad) entitled “Assessing the Value Orientations of Contributors to Virtual Citizen Science Projects” at Communities and Technologies 2023.
[May. 2023] My Co-Investigator and I were awarded a UW-Madison VCRGE grant under the Increasing Social and Economic Inclusion program. Read more here: Increasing Social and Economic Inclusion (ISEI)
[Apr. 2023] I gave a talk at the Robert F. and Jean E. Holtz Center entitled - Interlocutors: Carving Out a Role for Information Professionals in Citizen Science.
[Apr. 2023] Our paper (with UW iSchool Phd student co-authors Ellie Jeong and Tallal Ahmad) entitled “Assessing the Value Orientations of Contributors to Virtual Citizen Science Projects” has been accepted at Communities and Technologies 2023.
[Mar. 2023] I gave a talk at the [LSC’s Science Communication Colloquium] entitled - Citizen science: Supporting Advanced work through design.
[Feb. 2023] Research with my collaborator at UW-Madison Life Sciences Communication Kaiping Chen is highlighted in the The Badger Herald - UW partners with local organizations representing Black, Latinx voices in environmental conservation for research initiative.
[Jan. 2023] Our paper (along with collaborators from Syracuse University) entitled “Design principles for background knowledge to enhance learning in citizen science” has been accepted to iConference 2023.
[Jan. 2023] Our poster (along with collaborators from Syracuse University) entitled “Advanced work on user-generated content systems: Theory-driven method development” has been accepted to iConference 2023.
Tallal Ahmad (UW-Madison, Ph.D. Advisee), Ellie Jeong (UW-Madison, Ph.D. Advisee), Corey Black (UW-Madison, Masters student in Library and Information Studies), Stephen Ling (UW-Madison, Undergraduate in Statistics, Computer Science, Economics), Arden Wang (UW-Madison, Undergraduate in Computer Science), Yueming Xu (UW-Madison, Undergraduate in Data Science), Stephen Ling (UW-Madison, Undergraduate in Data Science), Kendall Walch (UW-Madison, Undergraduate in Data Science)
Xin Bu, Yiping He, Shihao Yang, Pragyan Das, Weiyu (Vincent) Kong, Samantha Lee, Xucen Liao
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