The iSchool is pleased to announce the appointment of Jill Naiman as a teaching assistant professor. She has served as an adjunct lecturer at the School since 2018 and as a visiting scholar at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) since 2016.
Naiman teaches research methods for efficient and engaging data visualization in technological fields. This fall she is teaching Data Visualization (IS 445) and Data, Statistical Models, and Information (IS 507). She has been collaborating with the Advanced Visualization Lab at NCSA on a variety of visualization projects and looks forward to sharing some of those techniques with iSchool students.
"Teaching a variety of classes as an adjunct gave me an understanding of the technological preparation we are giving iSchool students. In fact, I've been reorganizing what I’m teaching this semester to better align with the programming preparation students are receiving in the introduction to programming classes," Naiman said.
Naiman earned her PhD in astronomy and astrophysics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and completed National Science Foundation and Institute of Theory and Computation postdoctoral fellowships at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics before coming to the University of Illinois.
"I really like the interdisciplinary nature of the iSchool," she said. "As a graduate student, I started veering off from just one discipline fairly early and found learning about different fields to be quite helpful for problem solving in general. It’s wonderful watching students gain skills that they need to accomplish their goals in life."