Associate Professor and PhD Program Director Jana Diesner will give an invited talk at the conference "The Data Quality Challenge: Research during the Digital Transformation," which will be hosted by the German Council for Scientific Information Infrastructures on February 27-28 in Hanover, Germany. The conference will examine topics such as research integrity and trust, data quality as a political issue, criteria for the scientific quality of data, the data lifecycle, and data quality standards.
In her talk, "Reliable Signals? Discovering the Impact of the Quality of Social Interaction Data on Social Science Theory, Knowledge, and Practical Applications," Diesner will present on her lab's research on using digital traces of social interactions to supplement surveys, identifying the consequences of limited data quality for social science theory and practical applications, and analyzing large volumes of text data to validate social science theories in contemporary settings.
Diesner's research in human-centered data science and responsible computing combines the benefits of machine learning, AI, network analysis and natural language processing with the consideration of social science theories, social contexts, and ethical concerns. She leads the Social Computing Lab at the iSchool. Recent recognition for her research expertise includes a Linowes Fellowship from the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research at Illinois, a R.C. Evans Data Analytics Fellowship from the Deloitte Foundation Center for Business Analytics at Illinois, and an appointment as the CIO Scholar for Information Research & Technology at Illinois. Diesner received her PhD from Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science.