I am an assistant professor in the College of Computing and Digital Media at DePaul University in Chicago, IL. I co-direct the Technology for Social Good | Research and Design Lab with Dr. Denise Nacu. 

As for my research, I explore and design technologies used by geographically-bound communities to solve social issues in urban environments by considering social, cultural, and economic contexts as well as socio-technical infrastructures. My current projects explore how various Chicago communities use technologies to address issues such as violence, education, political efficacy, and economic development. The goal of my work is to design socio-cultural appropriate technologies that can be embedded in urban neighborhoods that encourage collaborative pro-social behavior.

I received my Ph.D. from the Technology and Social Behavior program at Northwestern University, which is a joint degree in Computer Science and Communication. I received my Masters in Computer Science focusing on Human Computer Interaction from the College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. Before attending Georgia Tech, I received two Bachelors of Science degrees from Spelman College in Computer Science and Mathematics. Prior to returning for my Ph.D., I was an User Experience Engineer at IBM.

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Recent News

• Jun 2018: We (with Enid Montague) received the CDM Collaborative Grant to support our work on designing sociotechnical systems to address maternal health for underrepresented women.
  
• Jun 2018: I received the Gerald Paetsch Advising Award for excellence in mentorship of undergraduate and graduate students.
  
• May 2018: I Joined the CSCW 2018 Program Committee.
  
• Apr 2018: We presented our late-breaking paper,  Inclusion of Underserved Residents in City Technology Planning and co-organized a two-day symposium, Computer-Human Interaction Mentoring (CHIMe) 2018 to support upcoming HCI scholars at CHI 2018.
• Apr 2018: I enjoyed giving a research talk to the Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science seniors at Maccalester College.
• Apr 2018: I enjoyed giving a GVU Brownbag talk at Georgia Tech titled, "Taking an Asset-Based Approach to Designing with Residents in Resource-Constrained Communities."
• Mar 2018: We receive grants from Microsoft Research, the National Science Foundation, and ACM to support our CHI Mentoring (CHIMe) Workshop held at CHI 2018.
• Feb 2018: I received grants from Robert R. McCormick Foundation and Polk Brothers Foundation to support our work on violence prevention.
• Dec 2017: We received a grant from the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority to support our research efforts to improve violence prevention.
• Feb 2017: Our CHI 2017 paper was awarded a Best Paper award (selected as the top 1% of all CHI submissions). 
• Feb 2017: I was awarded an NSF EAGER Grant to support my research designing and developing a mobile application to support violence interruption in Chicago.
  
• Jan 2017: Our paper (with Jennifer Burrell), "Empowered Participation: How Citizens Use Technology in Local Governance" was accepted to CHI 2017.
• ​more news...

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