Nine faculty receive new appointments

The iSchool is proud to announce that nine faculty members have received new appointments. The following appointments became effective August 16, 2025.

Anita Say Chan, Kate McDowell, and Dong Wang have been promoted to professor. Nigel Bosch, Jessie Chin, Melissa Ocepek, Matthew Turk, and Karen Wickett have been promoted to associate professor with indefinite tenure. Associate Professor Rachel Adler has been granted indefinite tenure.

Chan’s research includes globalization and digital cultures; innovation networks and the “periphery;” science and technology studies in Latin America; and feminist and decolonial approaches to technology. She directs the Community Data Clinic at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and iSchool and co-leads the Just Infrastructures Initiative with Grainger College of Engineering faculty. Chan received her PhD from MIT in the history and anthropology of science and technology studies.

McDowell's interdisciplinary work examines how storytelling plays a vital role in humanizing data analysis and communication. McDowell leads the nationally funded Data Storytelling Toolkit for Librarians project to equip libraries with narrative tools for data-informed advocacy, which has been used by librarians in over fifty countries. Her storytelling teaching was internationally celebrated with the ASIS&T Outstanding Information Science Teacher Award in 2022. She holds a PhD in library and information science from Illinois.

Wang's research includes social sensing, intelligence and computing, human-centered AI, and big data analytics. His work has been applied in a wide range of real-world applications such as social network analysis, crowdsourcing, disaster response, education, smart cities, synthetic biology, and environmental sustainability. He also serves as the director of the Social Sensing & Intelligence Lab. Wang holds a PhD in computer science from Illinois.

Bosch’s research includes machine learning/data mining methods to study human behaviors, especially in learning contexts, with an emphasis on model generalization and fair treatment of users. In addition to his role as iSchool associate professor, he also teaches in the Department of Educational Psychology at Illinois. He is the lab advisor for (Human + Machine) Learning Lab. Bosch obtained his PhD in computer science at the University of Notre Dame.

Chin is a translational cognitive scientist with multidisciplinary research training in cognitive science, human factors, human-computer interaction, and health informatics. She leads the Adaptive Cognition and Interaction Design (ACTION) Lab at Illinois. In July she received an NSF CAREER award to support lifelong learning and foster information literacy. Chin holds a PhD in educational psychology with a focus on cognitive science in teaching and learning from Illinois.

Ocepek's research and teaching interests include everyday information behavior, cultural theory, critical theory, food studies, and research methods. In 2025, she co-edited a new, open access book, Governing Misinformation in Everyday Knowledge Commons, which explores socio-technical realities of misinformation in online and offline environments. She serves as faculty affiliate for Illinois Informatics. She holds a PhD in information science from the University of Texas at Austin.

Turk’s research is focused on how individuals interact with data and how that data is processed and understood. He holds an appointment with the Department of Astronomy in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Illinois and serves as a faculty affiliate for the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. He received his PhD in physics from Stanford University, completed postdoctoral work at the University of California at San Diego, and was awarded an NSF Fellowship in Transformative Computational Science at Columbia University.

Wickett's research includes the conceptual and logical foundations of information organization systems and artifacts. She is most interested in the analysis of common concepts in information systems, such as documents, datasets, databases, digital objects, metadata records, and collections. Wickett earned her PhD in library and information science from Illinois.

Adler’s research covers human-computer interaction, accessibility, and computing education. She is particularly interested in designing applications for and with people with disabilities. She serves as co-director of the Information Experience and Accessibility Lab at Illinois. She holds a PhD in computer science from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.