Research Areas

Ethics and Community Engagement

As the world continues to be transformed by data and data-driven analysis, our research explores how technology impacts society as it becomes increasingly integrated into our lives.

SCI faculty collaborate with communities near and far to understand these impacts and how tech can benefit communities, from cultural preservation to communication.

Research Highlights

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Tim Huang Is Helping Residents of the Hill District Revisit Their Past with “The Time-Traveling Project”

Art has always been an immersive visual experience, but a project led by Tim Huang (assistant professor, Department of Information Culture and Data Stewardship) has taken it to the next level.

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SCI Students Help to Preserve Indigenous Cultures With VR Technology

In March 2024, students went to Ecuador for their Digital Narrative and Interactive Design (DNID) capstone project with Dr. Dmitriy Babichenko, clinical associate professor in the Department of Informatics and Networked Systems.

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Supporting Community Engagement with Civic Data: The Civic Switchboard Project

The Civic Switchboard project is increasing access through its focus on open civic data, community-related data shared by governments and civic organizations. Civic Switchboard aims to foster collaborations among libraries and local data intermediaries to support democratic and equitable access to data and information. 

Want to Learn More about SCI's Research?

Check out the most recent grants, research profiles, and more in our Research news section.

Explore Research News
Affiliated Faculty
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Mary K. Biagini, Associate Professor

Dr. Biagini's research interests include adult and young-adult resources and reading interests, continuing education, online education, and school-library media-center management. 

Faculty Profile
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Matthew Burton, Teaching Assistant Professor

Dr. Burton's research interests include infrastructure studies, data science, and scholarly communication.

Faculty Profile
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Raquel Coelho, Assistant Professor

Dr. Coelho's research - grounded in learning sciences principles and human-centered frameworks - is focused on theorizing about, supporting learning with, and learning about emerging technologies.

Faculty Profile
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Frances Corry, Assistant Professor

Dr. Corry asks questions about the ethics and cultural values in information practice, especially data deletion and preservation. 

Faculty Profile
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James (Kip) Currier, Assistant Professor

Dr. Currier's research interests include AI, technology ethics, intellectual property (with a focus on copyright and fair use); open movements; and management and leadership.

Faculty Profile
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Rosta Farzan, Professor

As a social computing researcher, Dr. Farzan is interested in studying online communities, how they perform and how they can be designed and maintained more effectively.

Faculty Profile
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Chelsea Gunn, Teaching Assistant Professor

Dr. Gunn's teaching and research interests include personal and community archives, digital sustainability, and the intersection of information work and creative practices.

Faculty Profile
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Kuo-Ting (Tim) Huang, Assistant Professor

Dr. Huang conducts community-based intervention studies designed to use emerging technologies (e.g., VR, AR, and digital games) to enhance various aspects of life. 

Faculty Profile
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Alison Langmead, Associate Professor

Dr. Langmead teaches and researches in the field of the digital humanities, focusing especially on applying digital methods mindfully within the context of sustainability practices and material culture studies.

Faculty Profile
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Yu-Ru Lin, Professor

Dr. Lin is interested in studying social and political networks as well as ways to understand network data through computation and visualization. Her work has primarily centered on large-scale community dynamics, high-dimensional (rich-context) social information summarization, and representation. 

Faculty Profile
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Diane Litman, Professor

Dr. Litman’s current research focuses on enhancing the effectiveness of educational technology through the use of spoken and natural language processing techniques such as argument mining, summarization, and dialogue systems.

Faculty Profile
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Eleanor Mattern, Teaching Associate Professor

Dr. Mattern's teaching and research interests include archives and digital curation, community-centered information work, civic engagement, and information policy and ethics

Faculty Profile
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Marcia Rapchak, Teaching Assistant Professor

Dr. Rapchak's research interests include information literacy, academic libraries, computer-supported collaborative learning, and critical librarianship.

Faculty Profile
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Song Shi, Teaching Associate Professor

Dr. Shi specializes in media, digital media, social change, digital technologies, and related policies and regulations.

Faculty Profile
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Angela Stewart, Assistant Professor

Dr. Stewart conducts research at the intersection of the learning sciences, artificial intelligence, and human-computer interaction. She uses multimodal data to understand students' social and cognitive states, particularly in collaborative STEM learning. 

Faculty Profile
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Erin Walker, Professor

Dr. Walker's research uses interdisciplinary methods to improve the design and implementation of educational technology, and then to understand when and why it is effective.

Faculty Profile
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Michael Yoder, Teaching Assistant Professor

Dr. Yoder’s teaching and research background is in natural language processing and computational social science, with applications in countering hate and extremism online.

Faculty Profile