Naz Andalibi joins the faculty this fall as an assistant professor, moving to the tenure track from her position as a postdoctoral fellow at UMSI.  Her work looks at sensitive disclosures and interactions around these disclosures in social media, and the design of social technologies to foster human well-being. She holds a PhD in informational science from Drexel University. 

Robin Brewer will be an assistant professor at UMSI, moving to the tenure track from her position as a President’s Postdoctoral Fellow.  Her work focuses on the intersection of human-computer interaction and accessibility, with a particular interest in how technology can be made more accessible for marginalized populations of users, such as older adults and those with vision impairments. She obtained her PhD in technology and social behavior from Northwestern.

Chris Brooks is a new assistant professor this fall, transitioning from an assistant research professor role at UMSI. His focus is on understanding how learning analytics can be applied to human computer interaction through educational data mining, machine learning and information visualization. He recently received the best full research paper award at the 2019 Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference. Chris holds a PhD in computer science and HCI/AI from the University of Saskatchewan.

Paramveer Dhillon will be an assistant professor starting September 1. He was previously a research scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management.  His research involves making careful empirical measurements – both causal and predictive – from big data, such as designing personalized interventions from large datasets of click-stream data. Paramveer received his PhD in computer and information science from the University of Pennsylvania. 

Oliver Haimson is moving to the tenure track as an assistant professor from his position as a President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UMSI. His work focuses on how people present and disclose changing identities on social media during life transitions. He previously held an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Oliver earned his PhD in information and computer science at the University of California, Irvine.

Abigail Jacobs will be joining Michigan as an assistant professor at UMSI and at LSA Complex Systems starting in the fall semester after finishing a postdoctoral fellowship at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. Her research focuses on structure, governance, and inequality in sociotechnical systems – measurement and social networks – and the social structure of the opioid epidemic. She previously held an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.  Abigail has a PhD in computer science from the University of Colorado, Boulder. 

Grant Schoenebeck, formerly on the faculty in computer science at Michigan, will be joining UMSI as an assistant professor starting September 1. His work is at the intersection of computer science and economics, with a particular focus on social networks and mechanisms for information elicitation and aggregation. He is an NSF CAREER recipient. Grant earned a PhD in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley. 

Misha Teplitskiy joins UMSI this fall as assistant professor after finishing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Harvard Business School of Information. His work looks at how organizations and communities generate knowledge and what interventions or organizational designs can help them do better. Misha holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Chicago. 

Anthony Whyte has joined the UMIS faculty as a Lecturer III, teaching data science courses in the residential and online programs. Anthony comes from the Information and Technology Services department where he was the IT program manager. Anthony first joined UMSI as an adjunct lecturer in fall 2018.

UMSI also welcomes a researcher as a new Presidential Post-doctoral Fellow this fall.

Michaelanne Dye joins UMSI as a President’s Postdoctoral Fellow starting September 1.  Her research focuses on underserved groups to investigate internet access in resource-constrained regions, the design of citizen-led information systems, and social media use for social change. She received her PhD in human-centered computing from Georgia Tech.

-  Jessica Webster, UMSI PR Specialist