The School of Information faculty continues to grow with the addition of four new educators and researchers joining the UMSI community in the 2012-2013 academic year. The incoming cohort will teach courses in health informatics, information organization, and social computing.

Predrag “Pedja” Klasnja is a new assistant professor teaching courses in health informatics and human-computer interaction. He earned his doctorate in information science at the University of Washington, followed by a senior fellowship in biomedical and health informatics at Washington. In addition to health informatics and HCI, his research interests include mobile and ubiquitous computing, persuasive technology, and user-centered design. Among his recent projects, he developed a mobile application for cancer patients that allows them to self-manage their care information during treatment.

Carl Lagoze joins the faculty as associate professor in information organization. He was previously an associate professor in information science at Cornell University. His research interests include digital libraries, metadata, and sociotechnical infrastructure for scholarly communication. Lagoze holds a BA from Cornell in urban planning, an MSE from the Wang Institute of Graduate Studies in software engineering, and a PhD from Cornell in information science. At Cornell, in addition to teaching undergraduate and graduate courses, he held a number of research and staff positions, including director of computer services, research fellow, and director of the master’s program for the information science department.

Sarita Yardi fills a social computing opening as an assistant professor at UMSI. She comes to UMSI from the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she has just received her doctoral degree. Her dissertation concerned “Supporting Parents in Managing Teens’ Social Media Use.” She has held internships at HP’s Social Computing Lab and Microsoft Research New England Social Media Group and has conducted research funded by Google, the National Science Foundation, and the Macarthur Foundation. She holds a degree in engineering from Dartmouth College and a master’s degree in information management and systems from the University of California, Berkeley.

In January 2013, Tawanna Dillahunt will begin a President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship at UMSI, working with Professor Paul Resnick. She is presently completing her PhD at Carnegie Mellon University. Her areas of research include human-computer interaction, environmentally sustainable behaviors, and energy use in low-income communities. Before beginning her doctoral studies, she spent seven years as a software engineer at Intel Corporation in Portland, OR.