Sun selected as 2024 PTC Emerging Scholar

Meicen Sun
Meicen Sun, Assistant Professor

Assistant Professor Meicen Sun was selected as a 2024 Pacific Telecommunications Council (PTC) Emerging Scholar and presented her research at the PTC Annual Conference, which was held from January 21-24 in Honolulu, Hawaii. PTC is a global, nonprofit organization promoting the advancement of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the Pacific Rim. The Emerging Scholar Program recognizes exceptional, rising scholars in the field of ICT.

In her talk, "Three Worlds of Power in Cyberspace," Sun discussed her research on the sovereign state's control of its Internet infrastructure, such as the regulation of service providers. According to Sun, findings show that neither democracy nor economic development accounts for the variation across states in cyberspace control. This suggests the presence of important new variables that may explain, among other things, the persistent tension among democracies over Internet governance and digital sovereignty, she said.

Sun's research examines the political economy of information, the geopolitics of data, and information policy. Her writings have appeared in several academic and policy outlets, including Foreign Policy Analysis, Harvard Business Review, World Economic Forum, the Asian Development Bank Institute, and The Diplomat. Sun holds a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and is an affiliated faculty with MIT FutureTech.

Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

iSchool researchers work with diverse groups to improve user experience

iSchool faculty are studying ways to improve user experience, with a common goal of improving technology and applications for the needs of individual users. These researchers are working with diverse groups to gain feedback, and several current projects are focused on experiences for users with disabilities.

Das receives student membership award from ASIS&T

PhD student Puranjani Das has been selected as a recipient of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) SIG CMR Student Membership Award for the 2024-2025 academic year. She will receive a complimentary one-year membership in both ASIS&T and SIG CMR, a special interest group focused on classification and metadata research.

Puranjani Das

Kim defends dissertation

Doctoral candidate Jenna Kim successfully defended her dissertation, "Evaluating Pre-Trained Language Modeling Approaches for Author Name Disambiguation," on June 11, 2024.

Jenna Kim headshot

Desai defends dissertation

Doctoral candidate Smit Desai successfully defended his dissertation, "Designing Metaphor-fluid Voice User Interfaces," on June 10.

Smit Desai

Student says ‘thank you’ with a helicopter ride

Last month, Michael Ferrer showed appreciation for one of his MSIM instructors in a unique way—by inviting him for an insider’s look at his work as a reservist in the Illinois Army National Guard. For the ILARNG BOSS Lift, which took place on June 18 at Camp Atterbury, Indiana, Ferrer selected Michael Wonderlich, iSchool adjunct lecturer and senior associate director of business intelligence and enterprise architecture for Administrative Information Technology Services (AITS) at the University of Illinois.

Michael Wonderlich and Michael Ferrer hold a U of I flag in front of a military helicopter