Anita Nikolich has joined the iSchool as director of research and technology innovation and research scientist. In her new position, she supports the iSchool's efforts to grow and expand research funding, tech transfer, and corporate relationships, and contributes to University-wide initiatives in big data science and computing.
Nikolich comes to the University of Illinois from the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), where she was a research professor in the Computer Science Department and director of the Advanced Computational Thinking Center. Her previous experience includes serving as program director for cybersecurity at the National Science Foundation (NSF), executive director of infrastructure at the University of Chicago, director of global data networking at Aon, and director of security for Worldcom. She is co-leading a $20M NSF project focused on internet security and privacy and is currently an American Association for the Advancement of Science Public Policy Fellow in the area of artificial intelligence.
Nikolich's research interests include security, privacy, networking, enterprise IT operations, and scientific cyberinfrastructure. She holds an MS in engineering from The University of Pennsylvania and a BA in history from the University of Chicago.