Older News

• Mar 2015: I presented my paper, "Engaging Around Neighborhood Issues: How Online Communication Affects Offline Behavior" at CSCW 2015.
• Mar 2015: Our workshop Information Technology and City Life was held at CSCW 2015.
• Jan 2015: Our paper, "The New Political Voice of Young Americans: Understanding Youth Civic Engagement" (with Molly Metzger and colleagues) was published in the Journal for Education, Citizenship, and Social Justice.
• Sept 2014: We (with Nichole Pinkard) were awarded a three-year $1.2 million NSF grant to support STEM learning amongst middle school girls using narratives and communities. See a short video about our project, Digital Divas.
• Sept 2014: I received a Irwin W. Stean Center Community-based Research Faculty Fellowship.
• Jul 2014: Janine Spears presented our paper, "'I have nothing to hide; thus nothing to fear': Defining a Framework for Examining the 'Nothing to Hide' Persona" at the Workshop on Privacy Personas and Segmentation at SOUPS 2014.
• Feb 2014: I presented our WIP paper, "Differences in Technology Use to Support Community Crime Prevention" at CSCW 2014.
• Jan 2014: My paper, "Community, Group and Individual: A Framework for Designing Community Technologies" was published in the Journal of Community Informatics.

2013

• Nov 2013: My article, "Empowerment Through Community Crime Prevention Technologies" was published in ACM Interactions.
• Sept 2013: I successfully defeneded my dissertation, "Digital Crime Prevention: Investigating How Communities Use Technology to Address Crime."
• Sept 2013: I started my new position as Assistant Professor in the College of Computing and Digital Media at DePaul University.
• Apr 2013: I presented my paper, "Protecting the Home: Exploring the Roles of Technology and Citizen Activism From A Burglar's Perspective" at CHI 2013.
• Jan 2013: My paper, "Protecting the Home: Exploring the Roles of Technology and Citizen Activism From A Burglar's Perspective" was accepted to CHI 2013.
• Dec 2012: My article, "Crime Prevention Technologies in Low-Income Communities: Using Collaborative Technology as a Grassroots Effort to Reduce Violent Crime in Chicago" was recently published in a special issue of XRDS Winter 2012.

2012

• Jun 2012: I received two grants to support my dissertation work.
• May 2012: I presented our paper, "Examining Technology That Supports Community Policing" (with Dan Lewis) as well as my dissertation work at CHI 2012 in Austin, TX.
• Apr 2012: I successfully defended my dissertation proposal.
• Jan 2012: Our paper, "Examining Technology That Supports Community Policing" (with Dan Lewis) was accepted to CHI 2012.

2011

• Dec 2011: I will present my dissertation research, "Examining and Designing Community Policing Technology" in the Doctoral Consortium at CHI 2012.
• Nov 2011: Our paper, "Digitalizing Crime Prevention Theory: How Technology Affects Victim and Offender Behavior" (with Dan Lewis) was accepted to the International Journal of Criminology and Sociological Theory.
• Sept 2011: I was invited to present my dissertation research on "Understanding Crime, Technology, and Communities" at the National Science Foundation.
• Jul 2011: I presented my dissertation research in the Doctoral Consortium at the ACM Communities and Technologies Conference in Brisbane, Australia.
• Jun 2011: I received a scholarship to attend the CRA-W Mentoring Workshop in San Jose, CA.
• Jun 2011: I presented our paper, "Digitalizing Crime Prevention Theory: How Technology Affects Victim and Offender Behavior" (with Dan Lewis) at the Annual Law and Society Conference in San Francisco, CA.
• Feb 2011: Our paper, "Crowdsourcing and Creativity" (with Mira Dontcheva and Liz Gerber) was accepted to the Crowdsourcing and Human Computation workshop at CHI 2011.
• Jan 2011: Our paper, "Affective Computational Priming and Creativity" (with Mira Dontcheva and Liz Gerber) was accepted to CHI 2011.

2010

• Dec 2010: My research was featured on Dot Diva.
• Nov 2010: I presented a poster and workshop paper at GROUP 2010.
• Oct 2010: My paper, "Exploring the Role of Technology in Family Communication About Safety" was accepted to the Connecting Families workshop at GROUP 2010.
• Oct 2010: I returned from a summer internship at Adobe where I had the pleasure of working with Mira Dontcheva.
• Sept 2010: My poster, "R U OK?:Increasing Perceptions of Safety and Community through Social Networks" was accepted to GROUP 2010.
• Aug 2010: I presented our paper at ICIC 2010 in Copenhagen, Denmark.
• June 2010: I began my internship at Adobe in San Francisco, CA.
• May 2010: Our paper, Using Virtual Interactions to Explore Leadership and Collaboration in Globally Distributed Teams (with Jason Ellis and Wendy Kellogg from IBM Research), was accepted to the 2010 International Conference on Intercultural Collaboration.
• April 2010: I received the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.
• April 2010: I presented a poster, "Embedding Power Primes in Mobile Devices," (with Liz Gerber and Mira Dontcheva) at CHI 2010.
• March 2010: I accepted an internship with Adobe working with Mira Dontcheva.
• February 2010: I presented my work with Liz Gerber on "The Role of Leisure Activities on Designers and their Paid Work" at the 2010 International Conference on Design Principles and Practices.
• Jan 2010: Our patent, "Assistant for Manually Proofreading Text Documents" was accepted by the US Patent Office.

​2009

• May 2009: I am a 2009 Google Anita Borg Scholarship recipient.
• May 2009: I received Honorable Mention for the Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowship.