Current Postings
December 17, 2014
The iSchool is pleased to welcome three new faculty members beginning with Liz Lyon in January 2014. Dr. Lyon joined us as Visiting Professor from University of Bath, UK where she served from 2000 as Director of UKOLN.
In July we welcomed David Thaw with a secondary faculty appointment in the iSchool (his primary appointment is Assistant Professor in the School of Law). Dr. Thaw is a noted cybersecurity expert and is an affiliated fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School.
In August 2014, Amelia Acker joined the faculty as Assistant Professor after finishing her doctorate at the University of California, Los Angeles. Since joining the iSchool Dr. Acker has received the ASIS&T ProQuest Doctoral Dissertation Award for her work.
In the past year, we introduced two new Certificates of Advanced Study (CAS) in Security Assured Information Systems (SAIS) and Big Data Analytics (BDA). Both CAS are 15-credit hours and both have a post-baccalaureate and post-master’s option. In the spring term (2015) two courses for the SAIS certificate will be available through Pitt Online.
We also received funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to begin a new doctoral fellowship program for iSchool students worldwide working on digital projects that align with the goals of the national Committee on Coherence at Scale for Higher Education. The program will eventually fund 10 “iFellows” and support two years of dissertation research.
In December 2013, Alyx Cole joined our staff as Director of Communications replacing our previous Director of External Relations, Kelly Shaffer.
In December 2014, Alka Singh joined our staff as our school-wide Internship Coordinator. In this new position, Alka will develop and coordinate opportunities for student internships, field experiences and/or practica. She comes to us with a BA in Communication and Political Science from Pitt and has been working in industry since 2009.
Effective September 2014, Leanne Bowler was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure. Dr. Bowler joined the iSchool in 2008 and received the 2014 iConference Lee Dirks Best Paper Award for her work on design strategies to mitigate cyberbullying (along with co-authors Eleanor Mattern (PhD’14) and Cory Knobel (UC Irvine)).
Staff members Brandi Belleau and Mary Koller were promoted to Academic Administrator and Undergraduate Academic Advisor, respectively. Brandi has been with the iSchool for five years and Mary has been with us for 42 years. Ninette Kay has been at Pitt for 26 years and was recently reclassified from Administrative Support III to Student Services I in recognition for her hard work over the years.
In June 2014 it was announced that Rush Miller, Director of the University Library System and Hillman University Librarian would be retiring effective December 31, 2014. Dr. Miller served in this position for 20 years during which time he advocated for new technologies and doubled the number of holdings at Pitt.
Pitt/CMU libraries
The search for Dr. Miller’s replacement has been suspended pending the results of a thorough review of the opportunities for collaboration between the library systems at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. Dean Ronald Larsen and Dean Keith Webster (University Libraries at CMU) will conduct the review, which is expected to conclude with a report due in June 2015.
As part of the ongoing collaboration between the iSchool and Pitt’s ULS, Eleanor Mattern was hired as visiting assistant professor in August 2014 with a joint appointment between our school and ULS. In January 2015, Matt Burton will be joining our school as a visiting assistant professor, also with a joint appointment in ULS and the iSchool.
Cybersecurity
In February 2014, the iSchool was ranked seventh out of more than 400 international programs for cybersecurity education in a survey sponsored by Hewlett-Packard that queried over 2000 IT and security professionals.
In June 2014 we were designated a National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance/Cyberdefense Research by the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security.
Additionally, under the leadership of Dr. Michael Spring, we have launched a partnership between the Software Engineering Institute’s (SEI) Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, and the iSchool to develop a pioneering program in the Science of Cybersecurity whose three-year funding has been sponsored by Pitt’s Office of Research. To this end we have hired Eric Hatleback as visiting assistant professor in August 2014 as a joint appointment between our school and SEI.
We were pleased to host members of our Board of Visitors (BOV) twice in 2014. In May, many members joined in person and via video conference to review the presentation by Elliance that summarized the results of the first research phase of our rebranding initiative. Their enthusiasm for this initiative carried through to our official meeting in September 2014 where we were joined by Chancellor Gallagher and Provost Beeson. The September meeting was facilitated by Grove Consultants and laid the groundwork for some exciting changes that will be happening at the school in the next several years.
We were delighted to welcome Mary Frances Cooper to our BOV in August 2014. Mary Frances Cooper is President and Director of Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh (CLP).
In February 2014 we held iFest, our annual celebration of the information sciences. During the same week, the inaugural Technology Entrepreneurship Creativity (TEC) conference was hosted at our school. Throughout the week of TEC and iFest we welcomed several employers and alumni who met with our students, provided advice on careers and finding their passion, and interviewed them for jobs.
iFest 2015 is around the corner and will take place the week of February 2 through February 7. The second annual TEC conference will again take place during iFest, this year on Friday, February 6 and everyone is encouraged to attend as many events as they are able.
iConference 2015 will be hosted by the University of California, Irvine and The Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences. The conference will take place from March 24-27 and will include keynote addresses by Christine L. Borgman (an iSchool alum), Carole Goble and Scott E. Page. The theme of the tenth annual conference is Create, Collaborate, Celebrate.