In my time at Northwestern, I have been committed to building and maintaining infrastructure for innovation and taking on leadership and editorial roles within my research community, my university, and my school.
Professional Service
In graduate school, I was an active member of the Academy of Management. Upon my appointment as faculty in Northwestern’s Schools of Engineering and Communications, I quickly established myself as an active leader in both the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). I have served as general co-chair for AAAI’s premier Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing and the Human Computer Interaction Consortium and served as treasurer and co-chair of communications, social impact, student design competition, and workshop and tutorials for nine ACM and AAAI conferences including: Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Computer Human Interaction, Collective Intelligence, Tangible Embedded and Embodied Interaction, and Human Computation and Crowdsourcing. I have served editorial roles on eight program committees for ACM’s Conferences on Computer Human Interaction, Design of Interactive Systems, Computer Supported Cooperative Work, and AAAI’s Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing. I currently serve as the founding associate editor of ACM’s Transactions on Social Computing.
I regularly conduct scholarly reviews for ACM’s primary conferences including Computer Human Interaction, Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Creativity and Cognition, User Interface Software and Technology as well as AAAI’s Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing. I also review social computing, crowdsourcing, and design related research for ASME’s Journal of Mechanical Design, IEEE Internet Computing, Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing, International Journal of Design, Journal of Engineering Education, and International Journal of Engineering Education.
I regularly serve prestigious foundations and endowments as an expert in crowdsourcing and design. I served on the Design and Social Impact Co-Chair for the Social Computing Workshop at the National Science Foundation where I organized a panel to identify critical areas for development in the field of social computing. I was selected as one of six thought leaders in computer science, management, design to identify areas they believe offer the most challenging and as yet unrealized and unrecognized promise in design and social impact. I served on the evaluation committee for the MacArthur Foundation’s 100&Change competition to identify and award a single proposal with $100 million to address a critical societal challenge. I have also served several times as a review Panel member for the National Science Foundation, been selected by the National Endowment for the Arts as one of three emerging thought leaders in design to discuss critical areas for development for the role of design in society, and invited by the Design Research Society to co-design the structure, identity, and agenda for the American Network for Research in Design.
As an investment in the well-being of my local community, I served on the advisory council for the Family Action Network, an organization that curates a high quality speaker series, Camp Galileo, an innovation-focused camp, and as the Robert A. Pritzker Visiting Scientist, Engineering, Inventor at the Francis Parker School in Chicago to advance innovation practice in grades K-12.
University Service
In my time at Northwestern, I have been actively involved in supporting design innovation with specific attention to the goals articulated in the University’s strategic plan including interdisciplinary collaborations and applied learning. When I arrived at Northwestern in 2008, I served on the Segal Design Executive Committee where we set the strategic direction for Design at Northwestern. That same year, I began to expand the research reputation of Segal Design Institute by inviting leading design researchers from across the world to share their cutting-edge research in our speaker series. Today, I serve on the Executive Council of the Design Research Council which includes 30 research active faculty across the campus who collaborate and publish design research in top tier venues.
Within the classroom, I have helped to double enrollment in Segal Design Institute project based learning classes, broadening participation beyond the School of Engineering to students from the schools of Business, Law, Journalism, Medicine, Arts & Sciences, Communication, and Music. I have also expanded non-profit local, national, and international partnerships including the City of Chicago, YMCA, and the World Design Organization. As a member of the Engineering Design and Innovation Master’s Curriculum Committee, I review and make recommendations for improvement to the program to establish it as a competitive master’s program in Design and a top program for recruitment for design engineers (e.g., IDEO, P&G, Intuit). The active design research program, broad participation across campus, local and international partnerships, and constant refinement of curriculum contributes to Northwestern’s standing as a top university for interdisciplinary design education and research.
As a respected senior faculty member who effectively collaborates across campus, the President and Provost have asked me to serve on prestigious cross campus search committees for the Dean of the School of Communication and Vice President of Global Marketing and Communications. They have also asked me to be the keynote speaker at the Provost’s Best Practices Forum to address upper level staff leaders across Northwestern, speaker at the Provost’s Faculty Leadership Program designed for department chairs, program directors, and one of eight senior faculty on the Faculty Advisory Council for the Society of Fellows, which aims to foster a robust and broadly interdisciplinary community of outstanding scholars. As a reflection of my high ethical standards, I was asked to serve on the Provost’s Faculty Appeals Committee. As a reflection of my commitment to diversity and inclusion, I served on the Provost’s Undergraduate Lifecycle Committee to support first-generation, low-income and/or underrepresented minority students.
Within the Department of Mechanical Engineering, I serve as an Undergraduate Advisor to 5-10 students each year – partnering with them so they can make informed decisions about their academic experience, establish effective learning strategies, and set challenging, meaningful goals in order to excel during their time at Northwestern. I serve as a faculty mentor for the Murphy Scholars Program, Summer Research Opportunity, and Undergraduate Research Assistant Program with a particular focus on retaining young women in the study of technology and social behavior. With the goal of making Northwestern Mechanical Engineering among the very best programs by preparing students for engineering practice, I serve on the Mechanical Engineering Design Curriculum Committee and represented our Design program during the ABET Evaluation accreditation process. With the goal of supporting applied learning and interdisciplinary collaboration among graduate students, I mentor SPG, the Graduate Student Improvisation Group, and advised the Ready, Set, Go Program, a program designed to empower researchers with communication skills by The Graduate School Program.
Invited to join the Department of Communication Studies in 2013, I serve as a core member of the Technology and Social Behavior (TSB) program supervising PhD students through the research lab rotation program, serving on the TSB Admissions Committee, reviewing and recruiting top applicants with interests and expertise in the behavioral and computer sciences, and recruiting, hiring and mentoring junior faculty hires as they transition to Northwestern.