UT Experts : University Communications : The University of Texas at Austin

Professor , Chandra Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
+1 512 656 6152, sbarber@identity.utexas.edu

Dr. Suzanne Barber is the AT&T Endowed Professor in Engineering and Director of The Center for Identity at The University of Texas. The mission of the Center is to deliver high-quality discoveries, applications, education and outreach in identity management, privacy and security. Formerly, Dr. Barber served as Director of Software Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. She is published in over 300 peer-reviewed journals in the areas of cyber-trust, cyber-security, agent-based systems, and software engineering. Her research has been supported by the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency, National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research, National Cancer Institute, U.S. Congress, the State of Texas, and numerous corporate organizations. Dr. Barber has invented and commercialized core technologies that deliver new levels of visibility, knowledge discovery and collaboration among distributed stakeholders, as well as trusted online transactions. Dr. Barber currently serves as a member of the U.S. Department of Homeland Securitys (DHS) Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee, appointed by Secretary of Homeland Security Napolitano, offering guidance to the DHS Chief Privacy Officer.

Professor of Practice , Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs
+1 512 471 8324, +1 512 656 6592, srgreenberg@austin.utexas.edu

Sherri Greenberg served for 10 years as a member of the Texas House of Representatives, completing her final term in January 2001. In 1999, she was appointed by the Speaker of the House to chair the House Pensions and Investments Committee, which oversees the Texas State Employee Retirement System, state employee health insurance program, Teacher Retirement System, local public employee retirement systems, and regulation of state investments and public securities. After the 1999 legislative session, the Speaker appointed her as chair of the Select Committee on Teacher Health Insurance. Greenberg served two terms on the House Appropriations Committee, which is the House's budget writing committee, and served on the Appropriations Committee's Education and Major Information Systems Subcommittees. Other committee assignments included the House Economic Development Committee and the Welfare-to-Work Committee. Greenberg's professional background is in public finance. She served as the Manager of Capital Finance for the City of Austin from 1985 to 1989, overseeing the City's debt management, capital budgeting, and capital improvement programs. Prior to that she worked as a Public Finance Officer for Standard & Poor's Corporation in New York, where she analyzed and assigned bond ratings to public projects across the country. Greenberg has a B.A. in Government from UT Austin and an M.S. in Public Administration and Policy from the London School of Economics. At the LBJ School she teaches courses in public financial management, policy development, and public administration and management. Her teaching and research interests include public finance and budgeting, Texas state government, local government, health care, education, utilities, transportation, and campaigns and elections.

Associate Professor , School of Architecture
, jjiao@austin.utexas.edu

Junfeng Jiao is an assistant professor in the Community and Regional Planning program and founding director of Urban Information Lab at UTSOA. He received his PhD in Urban Design and Planning from the University of Washington. His research focuses on using information technologies (GIS, GPS, Drone, smart phone, social media, wearable devices, etc) to quantify built environments and understand its impact on peoples behaviour (e.g. travel, physical, eating etc) and its health consequence. Specifically, he is interested in understanding how people react and reflect the built environments where they live, work, and play. He has investigated how built environments affect people's access to grocery stores, transit facilities, and bicycle infrastructures, and how people describe cities in cyber space through Twitter. He firstly coined the term of Transit Desert and developed various measurement methods. His intensive research on Transit and Food Deserts were widely reported by the Associated Press, Yahoo, MSN, NBC, NPR, USA today, Finance and Commerce, City Lab, The Conversation, Chicago Tribute, San Francisco Chronicle, LA Times, Seattle Times, Seattle Met, Dallas News, Houston Chronicle, Austin Statesman, Texas Tribune, Wired etc. He has worked on projects funded by the NIH, USDOT, UT Austin, Intel, WSDOT, RWJF, and others. These works have been published in journals like Journal of Urban Planning and Development, Journal of Urban Design, Journal of Urban Technology, Land Use Policy, American Journal of Public Health, Journal of Transport and Land Use, and Journal of Public Transportation etc. He is the co-chair for Analytical Methods & Computer Applications track at the ACSP conference and on the editorial board of Transportation Research Part D, PLOS one, and AIMS Public Health. He published six book chapters through the Springer and Routledge.

Interim Executive Vice President & Provost
, rdm@austin.utexas.edu

Rachel Davis Mersey is Associate Dean for Research for the Moody College of Communication, and also holds an appointment in the School of Journalism and Media where she is the Jesse H. Jones Centennial Professor. With more than a decade of experience in higher education and academic administration, she brings a passion for connecting scholarship and professional practice into grant-supported research and projects. She joins Moody College after serving at Northwesterns Medill School of Journalism, Media and Integrated Marketing Communications since 2008, most recently as associate dean for research and professor. Mersey also held courtesy appointments in Northwesterns Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences political science department and the School of Education and Social Policy learning science department. As a fellow at the Northwestern Institute for Policy Research, Mersey successfully collaborated across disciplines including serving as a PI on an NSF-funded project, Systematic Content Analysis of Litigation EventS or SCALES, to leverage artificial intelligence to bring transparency to court records. She is the author of two books. Mobile Disruptions, with co-authors in the U.S. and the Middle East, examines the state of and opportunity for mobile media innovations in the Gulf states. Can Journalism Be Saved? Rediscovering Americas Appetite for News, which is at the foundation of work she still does today, stands as a formative argument recasting local news efforts as community-driven initiatives. Mersey is currently collaborating with colleagues to examine the community infrastructure variables that are correlated with healthy local media markets. She is involved with a number of different industry-relevant projects including the examination of factors of media engagement; audience development via social video, and augmented and virtual reality; and podcasting as a means to community building. Previously, Mersey was a reporter at the Gannett-owned Arizona Republic, where she worked with azcentral.com and the NBC-affiliate. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Professor , School of Journalism and Media , Moody College of Communication
+1 512 471 4071, +1 512 471 6676, craig.watkins@austin.utexas.edu

S. Craig Watkins is the Ernest A. Sharpe Centennial Professor and the Executive Director of the IC² Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on the technical, social, and ethical implications of artificial intelligence. His research explores the challenges of deploying AI in the context of high stakes contexts like health care. For example, he was part of a multidisciplinary team of social scientists, psychologists, and computer scientists who prototyped a chatbot to support parents dealing with postpartum depression. Watkins is part of an NIH-funded project that is exploring the design of ethical AI to address the crisis of rising rates of suicide among youth, especially Black youth. His team is also probing an NIH dataset to understand how social determinants of health influence health outcomes and health disparities. Through his leadership at the IC2 Institute, Watkins is collaborating with the Dell Medical School and UT faculty to enhance the use of artificial intelligence to address health disparities. Craig is an internationally recognized expert in media and technology systems and the author of six books and numerous articles and book chapters. His research explores, among other things, how technological innovation built the hip-hop economy (Hip Hop Matters), the social and behavioral implications of young peoples engagement with computer-mediated technologies (The Young and the Digital), the shifting contours of the digital divide (The Digital Edge), and the creative ways young people adopt technology to navigate a precarious society and economy (Dont Knock the Hustle). This work illuminates the nuanced ways in which structural inequalities influence the design, deployment, and adoption of computer-mediated systems leading to both systemic challenges and opportunities to enhance the human experience. Watkins work has been profiled in places as varied as the Washington Post, The Atlantic, Newsweek, TIME, ESPN, and NPR, and featured at venues like SXSW, The Aspen Institute, The Boston Federal Reserve, New York Hall of Science, MITs Media Lab, The New York Times Dialogue on Race, and the Brene Brown podcast, Unlocking Us.

Program Director , Bureau of Economic Geology , Jackson School of Geosciences
+1 512 471 2003, kenneth.wisian@utexas.edu

Ken Wisian, Ph.D., Major General USAF (retired), is Associate Director, Environmental Division, of the Bureau of Economic Geology, Jackson School of Geoscience, The University of Texas at Austin. He also holds appointments in the Center for Space Research and in the Aerospace and Engineering Mechanics Department, Cockrell School of Engineering, is a charter member of the Center for Planetary Systems Habitability at UT Austin and is a Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society. Previously, Dr. Wisian was a senior state executive responsible for disaster recovery, oil spill prevention and response, and coastal infrastructure and environmental protection for Texas. Dr. Wisian is a geophysicist whose main research is geothermal systems for electricity generation. Other research interests include; infrastructure resiliency, disasters, autonomy/drones, applied gravity, planetary geology/space exploration and international relations. Dr. Wisian has published/presented work in subjects as diverse as geophysics, defense, artificial intelligence, crisis leadership and deep space exploration. Dr. Wisian holds a Ph.D. in Geophysics from Southern Methodist University, an M.S. in Strategic Studies from the US Army War College, an M.S. in Geology from Centenary College, and a B.A. in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. He teaches or has taught; environmental geology, military history, leadership and currently teaches Life in the Universe. Militarily, General Wisian, a navigator/bombardier, flew bombers, transports and fighters, is a graduate of the USAF Test Pilot School and commanded the 147th Reconnaissance Wing flying the MQ-1 Predator. General Wisian participated or lead military disaster response efforts for the Shuttle Columbia crash and multiple hurricanes. Ken is a graduate of the US Air Force Test Pilot School and has more than 70 hours of medium and high-risk test flights. General Wisian has combat time in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans, and his medals include the Bronze Star and Air Medal.

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Year of AI

Artificial Intelligence

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