PEOPLE

CIP Principal investigators

KATE STARBIRD

CIP DIRECTOR (2021-24) | ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, HUMAN CENTERED DESIGN & ENGINEERING

 

Dr. Starbird is Associate Professor in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering. Her research is situated within human-computer interaction (HCI) and the emerging field of crisis informatics—the study of how information-communication technologies (ICTs) are used during crisis events. One aspect of her research focuses on how online rumors spread during natural disasters and man-made crisis events. More recently, she has begun to focus on disinformation and other forms of strategic information operations online. In 2018, she received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award for research in this area.

JEVIN WEST

CIP FOUNDING DIRECTOR (2019-21) | ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, INFORMATION SCHOOL

@jevinwest

Dr. West is an Associate Professor at the Information School and served as the CIP’s founding director. He is a co-founder of the DataLab, the nexus for research on Data Science and Analytics. West develops data mining techniques for studying the Science of Science, where he investigates the origins of scholarly disciplines, the social and economic biases that drive these disciplines, and the impact of the current publication system. Currently, his research focuses on misinformation specifically in and about science.

RYAN CALO

PROFESSOR, SCHOOL OF LAW

@rcalo

Ryan Calo is the Lane Powell and D. Wayne Gittinger Professor in the School of Law at the University of Washington and holds a joint appointment in the Information School and a courtesy appointment in Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering. He is also a faculty co-director (with Batya Friedman and Tadayoshi Kohno) of the Tech Policy Lab, a unique, interdisciplinary research unit that spans law, computer science, and information science. A well-known law and technology scholar, Calo has testified before the German Parliament, the California Little Hoover Commission, and the full Judiciary and Commerce Committees of the United States Senate. He has organized events on behalf of the National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Obama White House, and spoken at Aspen Ideas Festival and NPR’s Weekend in Washington. Calo serves as an advisor to a wide range of organizations — including AI Now, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation — and is a board member of the R Street Institute.

CHRIS COWARD

SENIOR PRINCIPAL RESEARCH SCIENTIST, INFORMATION SCHOOL

@chriscoward

Coward is a Senior Principal Research Scientist at the University of Washington Information School and co-founder of the Center for an Informed Public. Coward, who previously served as director of the Technology & Social Change Group at the iSchool, studies issues of information access, digital equity, information and digital literacy, misinformation, and civic engagement. His research is primarily applied, and he uses participatory methods when engaging with communities. Much of Chris’s research involves partnering with public libraries to co-create new programs around his areas of expertise.

 

EMMA SPIRO

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, INFORMATION SCHOOL

@emmaspiro

Dr. Spiro is an Associate Professor at the Information School, a co-director of the Social Media Lab (SoMeLab) and a co-director of the DataLab. Spiro’s research involves the collection and analysis of large-scale social and behavioral data to answer key questions within the areas of sociology, information science, and social computing. Since early 2012, her work has focused on understanding information-related behaviors in the context of crisis events, including rumors, misinformation and collective sensemaking in online environments. This work has twice been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

CIP FACULTY 

CARL BERGSTROM

PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON BIOLOGY DEPARTMENT

@ct_bergstrom

Dr. Bergstrom’s research uses mathematical, computational, and statistical models to understand how information flows through biological and social systems. With Jevin West, Bergstrom created the Calling BS curriculum, which received international attention and is now being used at more than 70 universities around the world. Bergstrom’s CIP faculty appointment was made in March 2020 and renewed in March 2022.

MARY FAN

PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON SCHOOL OF LAW

Fan’s research and teaching are informed by her experiences as a federal prosecutor and as an associate legal officer at a United Nations criminal tribunal. Her expertise includes U.S. and international criminal law and procedure, evidence, privacy, and immigration.  She is the author of numerous articles and two books: Camera PowerProof, Policing, Privacy, and Audiovisual Big Data (Cambridge University Press 2019) and Perilous Science: Persistence and Survival in Politically Dangerous Research Domains (Stanford University Press, forthcoming 2020). Fan’s CIP faculty appointment was made in April 2020 and renewed in March 2022.

YUAN HSIAO

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION

Dr. Hsiao is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington. His major research explores the intersection of political communication, social media, and social networks. He is particularly interested in bringing a social network perspective to understanding a variety of communication and social processes, such as how networks on social media contribute to protest mobilization, how social interactions shape the production of misinformation and public opinion, how spatial and social relationships affect the spread of religion, or how community networks affect health behavior. Hsiao’s CIP faculty appointment was made in February 2022.

GARY HSIEH

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON HUMAN CENTERED DESIGN & ENGINEERING

Dr. Hsieh is an Associate Professor in Human Centered Design & Engineering, where he leads the Prosocial Computing Lab. He studies and designs technologies to help people improve their lives and their societies. His current research focuses on translating and communicating academic findings to support evidence-based human centered design and to enhance trust and understanding of science. Hsieh has presented research at the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, and has published work in Scientific Reports and the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, among other journals. Hsieh’s CIP faculty appointment was made in January 2023.

CAROLE LEE

PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

Dr. Lee studies emerging norms and disparities in how scientific institutions award and set standards for markers of credibility such as successful peer review outcomes. Her research has been published across fields (e.g., Science, The Lancet, Philosophy of Science) and supported by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and a Career Enhancement Fellowship funded by the Mellon Foundation and administered by the Institute for Citizens & Scholars.

CHERYL KAISER

PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY

Dr. Kaiser is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington, where she directs the Social Identity Laboratory. Kaiser’s research explores psychological aspects of prejudice, stereotypes, social identity, and diversity, and the intersection of these topics with law, politics, and policy. Kaiser’s research typically adopts an experimental approach, using self-report, psychophysiological, social cognitive, archival, and behavioral assessments both in the lab and field. Kaiser’s research has been supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation. Kaiser’s CIP faculty appointment was made in January 2023.

JIN HA LEE

PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON INFORMATION SCHOOL

Dr. Lee is a Professor and the Founder and Director of the GAMER (GAME Research) Group at the UW Information School. Her research focuses on exploring new ideas and approaches for organizing and providing access to popular music, multimedia, and interactive media, understanding user behavior related to the creation and consumption of these media, and using these media for informal learning. Recently, her work has focused on using popular media such as escape rooms to help improve the general public’s understanding of misinformation, and investigating how people encounter and develop strategies for combating misinformation in the context of fandom. Lee’s CIP faculty appointment was made in February 2021 and renewed in June 2023.

LISA MANHEIM

PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON SCHOOL OF LAW

Lisa Manheim is Charles I. Stone Professor of Law at the University of Washington’s School of Law. Her research explores the law of elections as it intersects with questions of federalism, institutionalism, and the rule of law. Her areas of expertise include administrative law, constitutional law, courts (including the Supreme Court), legislation, and property. Manheim’s scholarship has been published in the University of Chicago Law Review, the Supreme Court Review, the Vanderbilt Law Review, and other leading academic journals. The American Law Institute recently appointed Manheim to serve as co-reporter for the Restatement of the Law, Election Litigation project. Manheim’s CIP faculty appointment was made in January 2023.

TANU MITRA

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON INFORMATION SCHOOL

@tanmit
Dr.
Mitra is an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington Information School, where she leads the Social Computing research group. Her research focuses on studying and building large-scale social computing systems to understand and counter problematic information online. Her work employs a range of interdisciplinary methods from the fields of human computer interaction, data mining, machine learning, and natural language processing. Mitra’s CIP faculty appointment was made in September 2020 and renewed in June 2023.

 

KATY E. PEARCE

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION

@katypearce
Dr. Pearce is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington and holds affiliations with the Ellison Center for Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies and the Center for an Informed Public. Her research focuses on social and political uses of technologies and digital content in the transitioning democracies and semi-authoritarian states of the South Caucasus and Central Asia, but primarily Armenia and Azerbaijan. Pearce’s CIP faculty appointment was made in February 2022.

SCOTT RADNITZ

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON JACKSON SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES 

@SRadnitz
Dr. Radnitz is the Herbert J. Ellison Associate Professor of Russian and Eurasian Studies in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. He does research primarily on post-Soviet politics, specializing in topics such as authoritarianism, propaganda, informal politics, and identity. Radnitz is the author of Revealing Schemes: The Politics of Conspiracy in Russia and the Post-Soviet Region (Oxford University Press, 2021). His public commentary has appeared in outlets such as Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Slate and the National InterestRadnitz’s CIP faculty appointment was made in February 2021 and renewed in June 2023.

 

FRANZISKA ROESNER

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, PAUL G. ALLEN SCHOOL OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

@franziroesner

Dr. Roesner’s research focuses on computer security and privacy. Her interests are broad within that domain, but she is particularly excited about designing and building systems that address security and privacy challenges faced by end users of existing and emerging technologies. Roesner’s CIP faculty appointment was made in March 2020 and renewed in March 2022.

ZAHR K. SAID 

PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON SCHOOL OF LAW

Zahr K. Said is the Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development and Charles I. Stone Professor of Law at the University of Washington School of Law. Said holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Harvard University, a J.D. from Columbia (where she was a Kent Scholar and served as Articles Editor for the Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts) and a B.A. from U.C. Berkeley. She taught at the University of Virginia School of Law for three years as a Visiting Professor of Law, and was a Visiting Professor at Stanford Law School in 2018. Said’s research applies humanistic methods, theories, and texts to problems in legal doctrine and policy. Her work has appeared in the Lewis and Clark Law Review, the Iowa Law Review, the Cardozo Law Review, the North Carolina Law Review, the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, the Stanford Technology Law Review, and the Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts, among others. Current works in progress examine the role of the jury in copyright law and jury instructions in copyright litigation. Said’s faculty appointment was made in January 2023.

MARTIN SAVESKI 

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON INFORMATION SCHOOL

Dr. Saveski’s research develops tools for analyzing large-scale social data, aiming to provide a better understanding of social structure and behaviors online while also impacting the design of digital social systems. His recent work has focused on reducing political polarization online, improving the quality of online conversations, and causal inference in social systems. His research often falls at the intersections of Social Networks, Machine Learning, and Causal Inference. His work typically appears in venues such as ICWSM, WWW, and KDD, and has included collaborations with researchers at Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. His research has been awarded a best paper honorable mention at WWW ’18 and has been featured in popular media outlets, including The New York Times, National Public Radio, and MIT Tech Review.
 

YANFANG SU

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON DEPARTMENT OF GLOBAL HEALTH

Dr. Su, an Assistant Professor of Global Health in the School of Public Health and an Adjunct faculty at Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at University of Washington, is a health economist with more than 10 years of work experience in health systems and policy. Dr. Su holds a Doctor of Science in Global Health and Population within Health Systems track from Harvard University. During her postdoctoral training at the University of Washington, Dr. Su applied econometric methods to health financing and published papers in The Lancet as co-first author and The Lancet Infectious Diseases as first author. Her publications focus on three areas: 1) economic evaluation of healthcare systems, including analysis of equity, supply, demand, costs, and quality; 2) public policy evaluation; and 3) global health and population measures.

AMY X. ZHANG

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, PAUL G. ALLEN SCHOOL OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

Dr. Zhang is an Assistant Professor at University of Washington’s Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering and leads the Social Futures Lab, dedicated to reimagining social and collaborative systems to empower people and improve society. Previously, she was a 2019-20 postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University’s Computer Science Department after completing her Ph.D. at MIT CSAIL in 2019, where she received the George Sprowls Best Ph.D. Thesis Award at MIT in computer science. During her Ph.D., she was an affiliate and 2018-19 Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University, a Google Ph.D. Fellow, and an NSF Graduate Research Fellow. Her work has received two best paper awards at ACM CSCW, a best paper honorable mention award at ACM CHI, and has been profiled on BBC’s Click television program, CBC radio, and featured in articles by ABC News, The Verge, New Scientist, and Poynter. She is a founding member of the Credibility Coalition, a group dedicated to research and standards for information credibility online. She has interned at Microsoft Research and Google Research. She received an M.Phil. in Computer Science at the University of Cambridge on a Gates Fellowship and a B.S. in Computer Science at Rutgers University, where she was captain of the Division I Women’s tennis team. Zhang’s CIP faculty appointment was made in February 2021 and renewed in June 2023. 

BO ZHAO

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY

Dr. Zhao studies the social implications and ethical aspects of emerging geospatial technologies. His recent projects leverage these technologies to advance social inclusion and justice, especially for vulnerable groups such as refugees impacted by climate change, LGBTQ+ communities in challenging environments, and Black communities disproportionately affected by COVID-19. A significant part of his work involves exploring the use and consequences of geospatial misinformation in critical social and political issues. This includes his analysis of social media misinformation in supporting territorial disputes of Indigenous tribes and in discussions around “fake news” via “location-spoofing.” Currently, Dr. Zhao’s research in “Deepfake Geography” encourages scholars to develop advanced strategies to effectively tackle the intricate societal challenges arising from geographical misinformation generated by Geographic Artificial Intelligence (GeoAI) in today’s “post-truth” era.

CIP RESEARCH FELLOWS

JASON YOUNG

SENIOR RESEARCH SCIENTIST, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON INFORMATION SCHOOL

Young’s research examines how individuals leverage digital technologies to engage in conversations across value and knowledge systems. This work contributes to understandings of how new digital strategies are being developed to produce, and marginalize, truths within and between different worldviews. Young’s CIP research fellow appointment was made in March 2020 and renewed in March 2022. Young also serves as director of the Technology & Social Change Group at the iSchool.

CIP RESEARCH SCIENTISTS

MICHAEL CAULFIELD

RESEARCH SCIENTIST, CENTER FOR AN INFORMED PUBLIC
AFFILIATE INSTRUCTOR, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON INFORMATION SCHOOL

@holden

Caulfield, an affiliate instructor at the UW Information School, leads the CIP’s rapid-response research program and previously collaborated with the CIP as director of blended and networked learning at Washington State University Vancouver. Caulfield, who developed the SIFT method for fact-checking and related classroom instruction modules used in more than a hundred universities and high schools in the U.S. and Canada, has worked with various organizations on digital literacy initiatives to combat mis- and disinformation, including the American Association of State Colleges and Universities’ American Democracy Project, the National Writing Project, and CIVIX Canada. 
https://infodemic.blog/

RACHEL MORAN-PRESTRIDGE 

RESEARCH SCIENTIST

@RachelEMoran
Dr. Moran received her doctoral degree from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. Her research explores the role of trust in digital information environments and is particularly concerned with how trust is implicated in the spread of mis- and dis-information. Her research has been published in Information, Communication & Society, Digital Journalism, Journalism Practice, Media, Culture & Society and Telecommunications Policy. Moran, who previously served as a CIP postdoctoral scholar, also holds a BA and an MA in Social and Political Science from Cambridge University and an MA in Political Communications from Goldsmiths College, University of London. She was the Oakley Endowed Fellow at USC for 2018-19 and the 2018 Benton Foundation Junior Scholar.

CIP POSTDOCTORAL SCHOLARS

MERT CAN BAYAR 

POSTDOCTORAL SCHOLAR

Dr. Bayar, based at the UW Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering, is joining the CIP from Binghamton University’s Political Science Department. He studies public opinion and democracy, focusing on conspiracy theories and evolving attitudes on democracy and autocracy. Bayar’s research sits in an interdisciplinary space between political psychology and comparative political behavior with an emphasis on the politics of conspiracy theories and the competing understandings of democratic citizenship. Bayar will be focusing primarily on the CIP’s rapid-response research in the elections space. 

MADELINE JALBERT

POSTDOCTORAL SCHOLAR

@MaddyJalbert

Dr. Jalbert studies how context and subjective experiences influence memory, judgment, and decision-making. Her work primarily focuses on factors that impact judgments of truth and risk, as well as how these judgments play out in naturalistic contexts. The goal of this work is to shed light on effective strategies for preventing and correcting the spread of misinformation. Jalbert comes from a background in social and cognitive psychology. She completed her Ph.D. in Social Psychology at the University of Southern California under the advisement of Dr. Norbert Schwarz. Prior to this, she worked in the Applied Cognition Research Lab of Dr. Ira Hyman.

https://ischool.uw.edu/people/faculty/profile/mjalbert

YIWEI XU

POSTDOCTORAL SCHOLAR

Dr. Xu, based at the UW Information School, joins the CIP from Cornell University’s Department of Communication. Her work examines and develops theory-driven communication strategies that address persistent and emergent public health challenges, including racial disparities, vaccine hesitancy, misinformation, and gun violence, with the goal of promoting policy change and health equity. She also researches collective level phenomena in health communication. She conducts experiments, surveys, and content analysis by incorporating computational methods. At the CIP, Xu will be focusing on addressing problems of misinformation and disinformation primarily in the areas of health and wellbeing.

CIP STAFF

JULIA CARTER SCANLAN 

DIRECTOR OF STRATEGY AND OPERATIONS

Carter Scanlan joined the Center for an Informed Public in February 2020 with a background in higher education and non-profit work. She worked at Stanford University—first at Stanford Law School and then at the university’s Office of Development—for over a decade, focusing primarily on stewardship, donor relations, and development communications. In 2017, she moved to Seattle, serving for two years as Senior Director of the Washington/Alaska chapter of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS). At LLS, she was responsible, in partnership with the Executive Director, for all aspects of chapter management including fundraising, operations, staff leadership, events, communications, and strategic planning.

MICHAEL GRASS

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR COMMUNICATIONS 

Grass started with the Center for an Informed Public in April 2020 after a career in journalism, where he helped edit and manage news publications primarily in Washington, D.C. He’s the founding editor of Route Fifty, a digital news publication focused on state and local government management, budget and finance, technology and infrastructure that was launched by Atlantic Media in 2015. Grass also worked as a freelance copy editor; an editor in HuffPost’s D.C. bureau; deputy managing editor at Washington City Paper; local news and online editor at The Washington Post’s Express commuter newspaper; founding co-editor of DCist, a local news site in Washington, D.C. now owned by NPR affiliate WAMU; and a copy editor at Roll Call newspaper on Capitol Hill.

LIZ CROUSE

MISINFODAY COORDINATOR 

Crouse has coordinated the MisinfoDay program for high school students, teachers, and librarians since the Center for an Informed Public launched in December 2019. She has a background in education and librarianship and has worked in New York, North Carolina, and Washington schools as an ESL teacher, language arts teacher, and school librarian. In 2020, she co-founded Teachers for an Informed Public, a group of K-12 educators inspired by the CIP who work to bring information literacy education to their students and communities.

ZOË BERMET

PROGRAM MANAGER  

Bermet joined CIP in 2022 with over 20 years of experience executing and managing health research studies at Kaiser Permanente (formerly Group Health). She is currently managing Co-designing for Trust, a collaboration between academic and community researchers, librarians, educators, and other partners working to design community-oriented solutions to misinformation. Co-designing for Trust is a part of the National Science Foundation Convergence Accelerator, a program aimed at addressing national-scale societal challenges through use-inspired convergence research.

ALEX LODDENGAARD

SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER  

Loddengaard joined the Center for an Informed Public in 2022 after being an entrepreneur and software engineer in the technology industry. He’s a University of Washington Computer Science and Engineering alumni. At the CIP, Loddengaard builds tooling and data infrastructure to support researchers and CIP initiatives.

LIA BOZARTH

DATA ENGINEER  

Bozarth grew up on the West Coast and earned a bachelors in Computer Science from the University of Washington, Seattle and PhD from the University of Michigan’s School of Information. Bozarth is currently working as a Data Engineer at the Center for Informed Public (CIP). Outside of work, Bozarth enjoys basketball, badminton, running, weight lifting, horror films, Dungeons and Dragons with close friends, and teaching pets new tricks.

SAWYER BESSER

ADMINISTRATIVE AND PROGRAM COORDINATOR  

Sawyer Besser joined the Center for an Informed Public in 2023. Prior to her role at the CIP, Besser worked in the tech industry, supporting the operational needs of a large intern program. Additionally, she has held various student service roles at the University of Washington. Besser is a UW alum and holds a B.A. in Political Science and Communication. At the CIP, Besser provides administrative and program support to the center’s staff, faculty, and researchers.

PRACTITIONER IN RESIDENCE

DEAN MILLER

PRACTITIONER IN RESIDENCE

Dean Miller is managing editor of Lead Stories, the award-winning social media fact checking agency that produces more than 1,500 debunks per year. Recognized for best-in-the-nation work on debunking COVID disinformation, Lead Stories is commissioned to identify and debunk viral falsehoods for Meta and TikTok in the U.S. and in 12 countries across Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Miller led the formation of Lead Stories’ Russian-language and Ukrainian-language fact check teams for propaganda-targeting sites Lead Stories opened weeks after Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine. Prior to working at Lead Stories, he wrote the “Save the Free Press” column for the Seattle Times, which is how he first encountered the work of the Center for an Informed Public. After a lifetime of visiting family in Sequim, Miller moved to Washington after a short tenure as Senior Vice President/Content at Connecticut Public Broadcasting Editor. In Washington, he has served as Editor of the Port Townsend Leader and taught journalism at Western Washington University.