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Four new faculty members will be joining the Department of Information Science in the College of Media, Communication and Information in fall 2016, reflecting a wide range of expertise that includes the historical investigation of information technology and its application to policy; the discovery and advancement of new techniques for computational social science and big data analysis; and the development of innovative ways to broaden participation by underrepresented groups in computing and informatics—topics that address current national scientific and educational priorities.

Professors William Aspray, Lecia Barker, Brian Keegan and Ricarose Roque will further expand the mission of the Department of Information Science, which considers the relationships between people, places and technology, as well as the data that results from those mediated interactions. The department’s collegial and interdisciplinary approach draws on social science, the humanities and computing, providing its graduates with the conceptual machinery, practical skills and confidence to succeed in a future characterized by new ways of working, communicating and effecting change in the world.

Learn more about our new faculty:

William Aspray

Professor William Aspray studies the history, policy and social context of information and information technology. He is the author or editor of more than 100 publications and has recorded and edited more than 200 oral histories deposited in professional archives. He serves on the editorial boards of Communications of the ACM, The Information Society,Information and Culture and Information Research. He is also the co-editor of the MIT Press Series on the History of Computing.

Aspray holds a BA and MA in Mathematics from Wesleyan University and a PhD in History of Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has extensive experience with computing and information science, history and sociology of science and technology and information policy. He has held faculty positions at Harvard, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia Tech and Williams University. He also served in management positions at the Charles Babbage Institute, the Computing Research Association and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Lecia Barker

Associate Professor Lecia Barker studies social and cultural contexts of information. One line of her research focuses on the social climates and educational practices that produce information technology professionals. She also studies the creation of information technology that can improve social and educational practices.  Lecia also serves as a senior research scientist for the National Center for Women and Information Technology, for which she has co-authored more than 30 publications intended to improve women’s representation in information technology careers. She advises several organizations, including The College Board, CSNYC, Harvard, Harvey Mudd and a Georgia Tech/University of Massachusetts partnership. She is a founding member of the UCAR Human Subjects Committee.

Lecia is excited to be returning to ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ-Boulder. Before taking a position at the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin in 2008, she served for ten years as the director of ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ-Boulder’s ATLAS Assessment and Research Center. She earned a PhD in communication from ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ-Boulder, an MBA in Marketing from San Diego State University and a BA in Linguistics and Spanish from the University of Iowa.

Brian C. Keegan

Assistant Professor Brian C. Keegan is a computational social scientist whose research is at the intersection of human-computer interaction, network science and data science. His research explores the structure and dynamics of large-scale online communication and collaboration using socio-technical system log data. Brian is developing new methods, theories and tools to help people make better sense of bursts of information and design better responses to them.

Before joining ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ-Boulder, Keegan was a research associate at the Harvard Business School’s HBX online learning platform and a postdoctoral researcher in computational social science at Northeastern University. He received his PhD in media, technology and society from Northwestern University’s School of Communication. He also earned SB degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Science, Technology and Society from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Ricarose Roque

Assistant Professor Ricarose Roque explores how to design inclusive learning experiences that enable young people to create and express themselves with new technologies and media with a special focus on youth from underrepresented groups in computing. She draws on qualitative methods such as ethnographic and design-based methods to study the role that social context plays in supporting children’s participation in computing. She leads the project and has conducted research as part of the MIT team for the last five years.

Ricarose comes from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she is completing her Ph.D. in Media Arts and Sciences with the research group at the . She is also a fellow at the . Previously, she was a lead developer for the OpenBlocks framework and the StarLogo TNG programming environment. Ricarose received a SB and a MEng in Computer Science and Engineering and a SM in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT.