Jiangping Chen assumed the position of interim executive associate dean and visiting professor on August 16. In this role, she will work closely with Dean Eunice E. Santos to realize the iSchool's strategic goals and objectives. She also will provide leadership for the internal administration of the School, including oversight for the work of associate deans and assigned staff as well as the coordination of faculty affairs. Chen's position will become permanent following approval by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.
Chen comes to the iSchool from the University of North Texas (UNT), where she served as Regents Professor and chair of the Department of Information Science. Her accomplishments include growing and shaping the department with a focus on educational programs and strategic research directions.
"Professor Chen's expertise is well aligned with our current needs. She will contribute significantly to the creation of well-formulated strategies to support our School's phenomenal growth, while emphasizing innovation and efficiency," said Santos.
Chen conducts research in information science, data science, and library science, and her expertise includes information retrieval and access, digital libraries, information services, information management, and data analytics. She is the founder of UNT's Intelligent Information Access (IIA) Lab, which explores methods for access, interaction, and analysis of large, distributed, heterogeneous, multimedia, and multilingual information. She currently focuses on applying data science techniques to information problems and misinformation. Her research has been supported by prestigious funders, such as the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the National Science Foundation.
Chen is adept at graduate and undergraduate instruction, developing and teaching courses in information science and data science. These courses include Introduction to Information Science, Digital Libraries, Information Architecture, Data Analysis and Knowledge Discovery, Research Methodology, Natural Language Processing, Data Modeling, and Web Database Systems.
Her professional contributions include authoring numerous publications, including a monograph on multilingual digital libraries, journal articles, book chapters, and conference proceedings as well as giving invited presentations and talks. She is actively involved in several organizations, and she has served as co-chair of the ALISE Council of Deans, Directors, and Chairs; editor-in-chief of The Electronic Library; and general chair of 2018 ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries.
"I am very excited to join the iSchool," said Chen. "I look forward to working with the wonderful faculty, staff, and students, and making my contributions to the School's vision and strategical goals," said Chen.
Chen holds a PhD in information transfer from Syracuse University, a master's degree in information science from the Library of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a bachelor's degree in information science from Wuhan University.