SIG-SM Team

Lingzi Hong
Chair (2024-2025)
College of Information, University of North Texas

Dr. Lingzi Hong is an Assistant Professor in Data Science at the University of North Texas College of Information. She earned her PhD in Information Science from the University of Maryland College Park in 2019. Her research interest focuses on computational social science, where she uses advanced computing techniques and qualitative user studies, to decipher the complex interactions between humans and sociotechnical systems. She has publications in top computer research conferences, including AAAI, EMNLP, ICWSM, NAACL, and prestigious journals, such as IJHCI and JASIS&T. She is currently the PI of two applied research grants supported by the IMLS (Institute of Museum and Library Services): Inclusive Services to Enhance Immigrants' Resilience to Crisis (LG-256661-OLS-24) and Gauging Library Needs for Advanced AI-Assisted Cataloging (LG-256666-OLS-24).

Ly Dinh
Chair-Elect (2024-2025)
School of Information, University of South Florida

Dr. Ly Dinh is a computational social science researcher specializing in network science, natural language processing, and social simulation models to study and advance our understanding of complex social and organizational systems. Her research seeks to address critical challenges in crisis informatics, focusing on improving situational awareness and response coordination in emergency settings. Dr. Dinh’s current projects place network science at the core to explain phenomena ranging from egocentric networks to large-scale interagency emergency response networks. She also develops and tests new measures to capture the complexities of social interactions across various network levels, including egos, dyads, triads, subgroups, and whole networks. Her recent work includes developing and benchmarking large language models (LLMs) to determine their accuracy and reliability in various real-world contexts, including enhancing decision-making in crisis situations, and combating cyber scams. By leveraging LLMs, her research aims to improve real-time information processing for crisis informatics and provide tools for detecting and preventing fraudulent online activities. Dr. Dinh's research has been published in Quantitative Science Studies, Journal of Contingencies & Crisis Management, Information Processing & Management, Scientific Reports, and other peer-reviewed conferences in computational social science. She is a 2023 FL-AGEP Scholar, and a 2020 Grace Hopper Scholar for Women in Computing.

Honglei Sun
Webmaster (2024-2025)
School of Information Management, Nanjing University

Dr. Honglei Sun is an associate professor at the School of Information Management, Nanjing University. She earned her PhD in Library and Information Science from Nanjing University. Her research areas include library science, social informatics, and social media. Her research has been published in a range of journals including Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, Library and Information Science Research, Aslib Journal of Information Management, and The Electronic Library. As PI of the Youth Project of the National Social Science Foundation, funded by the National Office for Philosophy and Social Science of China, she is leading an investigation into the data governance of public libraries from across the country. Honglei teaches across the iSchool spectrum, including courses on Social informatics, Public cultural services, Library science, and Bibliography. She has been actively involved with ASIS&T since 2018 and has presented at several annual meetings (e.g., JCDL). She has also been the reviewer of many journals and conferences, such as Information Processing & Management, Health Information and Libraries Journal, ASIS&T, iConference, and HICSS.

Derick ChungCheh Ma
Secretary (2024-2025)
Department of Information Science, College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity, University at Albany, State University of New York

Derick Chungcheh Ma is a Ph.D. student in Information Science at the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity, University at Albany, State University of New York. His research interests include misinformation, information behaviors, political communication, and digital governance. Specifically, he investigates the factors that influence individuals’ belief in received information, how this belief shapes their perceptions and attitudes, and its subsequent impact on decision-making within the context of online policy discourse and communication. Ultimately, his work aims to develop interventions against political disinformation on social media and to empower meaningful democratic participation by well-informed citizens.

Han Zheng
Communications Officer (2024-2025)
School of Information Management, Wuhan University

Dr. Han Zheng is an associate professor at the School of Information Management, Wuhan University. He earned his Ph.D. in Information Studies from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. His research currently focuses on health informatics, computational social science, and research evaluation. His work has been featured in peer-reviewed academic journals such as Telematics and Informatics, Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, Internet Research, Information Processing & Management, and Computers in Human Behavior. He also serves as the associate editor for Frontiers in Psychology and as the conference chair assistant for ASIS&T 2021.

ResearchGate

Wuhan University

Miaomiao Chen
Treasurer (2024-2025)
School of Information Management, Wuhan University

Miaomiao Chen is currently a PhD student at the School of Information Management of Wuhan University, China. Her research interests cover social media analysis, crisis informatics, and knowledge contribution. Her research has been published in journals and conferences such as Internet Research, Information Technology & People, and ASIS&T 2023. She has won the first prize in the China Graduate Mathematical Modeling Competition for two consecutive years, along with receiving the National Scholarship for two consecutive years. Additionally, she has also won the First Prize of Academic Innovation Award in Wuhan University as well as other accolades.

Wuhan University

SIG-SM Past Team 2022-2023

SIG-SM Team

Catherine Dumas (2022-2023)-Chair

Souvick Ghosh
Chair-elect (2022-2023)

Priya Vaidya
Secretary (2022-2023)

Shalini R. Urs
Secretary (2021-2022)

Lingzi Hong
Treasurer (2022-2023)

Tara Zimmerman
Treasurer (2021-2022)

Abdul Jabbar - Communication Officer - SIG SM

Abdul Jabbar
Communications Officer (2022-2023)

Miyoung Chong
Communications and Social Media Officer (2021-2022)

Amara Malik
Communications and Social Media Officer (2021-2022)

Bazilah A. Talip
Recruitment/Membership (2021-2022)

Charles Bugre
Webmaster (2022-2023)

Aylin Imeri
Webmaster (2021-2022)

Past Chair 2023-2024

Dr. Souvick Ghosh

Dr. Souvick “Vic” Ghosh is an Assistant Professor at the School of Information, San Jose State University. His research interests focus on conversational search systems and social media analytics. He did his Ph.D. in Information Science from Rutgers University, USA, and has a Bachelor's and Master's in Computer Science. Souvick is the Panel Track Co-chair for the ASIS&T Annual Meeting 2022 and has been involved with the SIG SM (as a member and officer) since its inception. He is the Minitrack Chair for HICSS 2023 and the Program Committee member and reviewer of several ACM conferences (ACM SIGIR, ACM CHIIR, ACM CUI) and journals (ACM TOIS, JASIST, IP&M). He has also been involved with DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) initiatives in several capacities (ACM SIGIR, Rutgers University) in the past and present.

Past Chair 2022-2023

Dr. Catherine Dumas
University at Albany, State University

Catherine Dumas is a visiting Assistant Professor, and Interim INF PhD Director College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity at Albany, State University of New York. Her research is motivated by data generated by platforms potentially used for online collective action or digital activism, in particular, electronic petitioning. Most recently, she is studying user behavior and interactions on next-gen social VR platforms and making sense of group interaction in VR in the context of next generation e-Participation initiatives. She is also working on a project using VR to train library school student's crisis management in public libraries. Additionally, Dr. Dumas is exploring the usability and effectiveness of using immersive technologies and gamification in teaching and learning.

Past Chair 2021-2022

Dr. Amir Karami
University of Alabama at Birmingham

Amir Karami is an Associate Professor of Quantitative Methods/Business Analytics in the Department of Management, Information Systems & Quantitative Methods in the Collat School of Business at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). Before joining UAB, he served as an Associate Professor in the School of Information Science (School) at the University of South Carolina (U of SC). He was also the Associate Dean for Research in the College of Information and Communications, a Faculty Associate in the South Carolina SmartState Center for Healthcare Quality (CHQ) at the U of SC Arnold School of Public Health, and Social Media Core Director in the U of SC Big Data Health Science Center (BDHSC).

Past Chair 2020-2021

Dr. Loni Hagen
University of South Florida

Loni Hagen is an Assistant Professor at School of Information at University of South Florida. She received degrees in Law, Information Studies (specialized in Information Law), and earned her PhD in Information Science from University at Albany, SUNY. Her current research interests are applying data science to understand human behaviors and to make policy decisions.

Past Chair 2019-2020

Dr. Vivek Singh
Rutgers University

Vivek Singh is an Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Information and the Director of the Behavioral Informatics Lab at Rutgers University. His research lies at the intersection of Computational Social Science, Data Science, and Multimedia Information Systems. Before joining Rutgers, he was a post-doctoral researcher at the MIT Media Lab. He holds a Ph.D. in Information and Computer Science from the University of California, Irvine. His work has appeared in leading disciplinary and interdisciplinary publication venues (e.g. Science, ACM CHI, JASIST) and has been covered by popular media (e.g. New York Times, BBC, Wall Street Journal). Singh's research is supported by the US National Science Foundation and Google.

Past Chair 2017-2019

Dr. Aylin Ilhan
Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf

Aylin Ilhan is a research associate at the Department of Information Science at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf in Germany. She investigated in her dissertation different aspects such as gamification, data privacy, health information behavior regarding activity tracking technologies and users' interaction with those devices.

She has been part of the Health Information and Libraries Journal editorial advisory board (since 2021). Since 2022 she is also an associate editor of the Data and Information Management Journal and Information Matters (sponsored by ASIS&T).

Dr. Isabelle Dorsch
ZBW Research

Isabelle Dorsch focuses on social media research and informetrics in general. Scholarly communication, scientometrics, scholarly indicators for research assessment, and metrics literacies are fields of research she studies or is interested in. For social media, Isabelle especially studied the analysis of user behavior, visual media, hashtags, and Instagram. As a lecturer, she teaches several classes in information retrieval, knowledge representation, and student research seminars.