Thinkers. Doers. Scholars. Problem solvers. Visionaries. Meet some of the faculty who will shape your iSchool experience. Our faculty advance the field through their forward-thinking ideas and research. Visit the iSchool Website for all faculty.
Here are just some of the incredible faculty developing and teaching the undergraduate program.
Emily Knox, Associate Professor
Knox provides leadership for the BS/IS degree. "The BS/IS focuses on helping people use information and technology to meet their goals and benefit society. It will offer an education in the core values of information science—including equitable & open access to information, user privacy & confidentiality, ethics, inclusion & diversity, & intellectual freedom—to a wider audience."
Research Focus: Information access, intellectual freedom & censorship, information ethics, information policy, print culture & reading practices.
IS 101 Intro to Information Sciences & IS 202 Social Aspects of Info Technology
Yang Wang, Associate Professor
Wang is on the BS/IS Program Committee and is developing UCI/UX courses. Wang presented his research on inclusive privacy at Facebook's Digital Literacy & Transparency Design Jam. Wang will join a global team of experts from Facebook's Accessibility Team and the TTC Labs in creating innovative designs focused on transparency and control for people with low tech literacy. Read Full Article
Research Focus: Usable privacy/security, data-driven privacy/security, inclusive design, explainable AI, human-computer interaction, social computing, ubiquitous computing, computer-supported cooperative work.
Melissa is on the BS/IS Program Committee. Her current research focus addresses the totality of everyday life by exploring information behaviors across life contexts through shadowing and participant observation. Much of her work has addressed the intersection of information and culture with a strong emphasis on food.
Research Focus: Everyday information behavior, information behavior, cultural theory, critical theory, food studies, leisure studies, and ethnography.
Duffy is a cartoonist, scholar, writer, curator, lecturer, teacher, and a Glyph Comics, Eisner Comics, and Bram Stoker Award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling graphic novelist. He holds a MS and PhD in Library and Information Sciences from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he is on faculty, teaching courses on computers & culture, and social media & global change.
News: Duffy's Kindred adaptation selected as top pick by ICA Reads
IS 309 Computers & Cultures (IS 390 CC)
Wickes is on the BS/IS Program Committee and is developing the programming courses for the curriculum. She received an award for her contributions to Project Jupyter, a nonprofit, open-source project that supports interactive data science and scientific computing across all programming languages. Wickes was recognized for her community and educational work advocating the use of notebooks in teaching Python and Jupyter. News: Wickes honored by Project Jupyter
Research Focus: Data curation, research data management, research programming.
IS 452 Foundations of Information Processing
Turk is on the BS/IS Program Committee, and is an assistant professor in the School of Information Sciences and also holds an appointment with the Department of Astronomy in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. His research is focused on how individuals interact with data and how that data is processed and understood. News: Turk presented Whole Tale project at SciPy 2018
Research Focus: Data analysis and visualization, social structures of academic software communities, information transmission through software.
Chan holds a joint appointment with the iSchool and the Department of Media and Cinema Studies and directs the interdisciplinary Technocultures Lab. She holds a Fiddler Innovation Faculty Fellowship at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). News: Data & Society Faculty Fellow
Research Focus: Science and technology studies, globalization and innovation economies, critical data studies, data ethics and cultures.
IS 265 Innovation Illinois: From Accessible Design to Supercomputing Cultures & IS 266 Community Innovation
Ginger is a program coordinator with the Illinois Informatics Institute and adjunct instructor at the School of Information Sciences. His work includes aspects of all three missions of the University of Illinois: public engagement, teaching and research. Jeff draws upon a robust technical, multimedia and social science background, accented by teaching and organizational leadership, and first earned his rabble-rousing reputation as a result of activist research on structural racism as observed on Facebook.
IS 351 Design of Usable Information Interfaces
Judith Pintar, Teaching Associate Professor
Pintar is on the BS/IS Program Committee and teaches an IS 400-level course on Playful Design. News: University funds interdisciplinary game studies project
Research Focus: Social Informatics, interactive AI and suggestibility, and the development of tools to foster programming literacy through collaborative game design, interactive digital narrative, and playful pedagogies; social narrative approaches to trauma and memory studies.
IS 490PD Playful Design Methods
David Dubin, Teaching Associate Professor
Dubin is on the BS/IS Program Committee and is developing analytical/mathematical courses for the curriculum. He presented at the Playful by Design Symposium on "Central Illinois Games and Gamers: Some Highlights of the Last Half Century," which traced connections between local hobby gaming communities in Champaign-Urbana, Normal, and Decatur to research and educational development programs on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Illinois State University campuses from 1960 to the present. News: Game studies symposium features iSchool researchers
Research Focus: The foundations of information representation and description; issues of expression and encoding in documents and digital information resources.
Magee is on the BS/IS Program Committee, and is a youth advocate who teaches about and researches youth technology and information practices. She has been awarded grants for her research. "Working with teens in the pilot study for the Young Researchers project was inspiring and demonstrated that youth can substantively contribute to the way we design and conduct research about their experiences," said Magee. "These teens worked together for eight months, and their timely research investigating how their peers decide what to trust on social media shows that teens have important questions to ask and answer through the original research process." News: Magee awarded IMLS grant for young research project
Previously, Hopping developed and maintained business software applications for clients in the San Francisco Bay area. According to Hopping, his fascination with the socio-cultural aspects of the systems he designed led him to pursue an advanced degree in social psychology. News: New role for Hopping
Research Focus: Social and community informatics, sociological theory of human rights, relational sociology, and action research and public policy relating to digital inclusion and digital literacy.
INFO/CS 102 Little Bits to Big Ideas & IS 390W1A Web Technologies & Techniques
Lori Kendall is an expert in personal archiving, online community and identity, social aspects of computing, research methodology, and gender and technology. She has held leadership roles in professional organizations including the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology section of the American Sociological Association and the Association of Internet Researchers.
Research Focus: Personal archiving; online community and identity; social aspects of computing; research methodology; and gender and technology.
IS 202 Social Aspects of Info Technology
More Faculty Profiles to be Added in the Future
