Staff

Director

James E. Katz, Ph.D., is professor and chair of the Department of Communication at Rutgers University where he also directs the Center for Mobile Communication Studies. Katz was named by the Rutgers Board as Board of Governors Professor of Communication. Established in 1989, Board of Governors Professorships recognize exceptional scholarship and accomplishment by a faculty member at full professorial rank. It is the highest honorific conferred on active faculty by Rutgers University.

Professor Katz has devoted much of his career to exploring the social consequences of new communication technology, especially the mobile phone and Internet. Currently he is looking at how personal communication technologies can be used by teens from urban environments to engage in informal science and health learning. This research is being carried out through an NSF-sponsored project with New Jersey’s Liberty Science Center.

Among his recent awards are the 2009 Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Twentieth Century Communications History (Italy) and election as Fellow of the AAAS, one of America’s most important scientific societies. Other awards include Bellcore’s Distinguished Member of Staff Award, a Mellon Foundation Scholar award, and the Distinguished Scholar Award of the Society for the Social Study of Mobile Communication.

Katz has been granted two patents in the telecommunication realm and has won post-doctoral fellowships at Harvard and MIT. He is also the author of more than 50 refereed journal articles. His books, which include Magic in the Air: Mobile Communication and the Transformation of Social Life and Social Consequences of Internet Use: Access, Involvement, Expression, have been translated into Chinese, Italian, Japanese and Spanish. His latest volume, published by MIT Press, is Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies.

Prior to coming to Rutgers, Professor Katz headed the social science research unit at Bell Communications Research. Among the schools at which Katz has taught is University of Texas, Austin, where he also served as chair of the Austin World Affairs Council. Katz is frequently interviewed about his research by the press, including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, as well as network news programs and PBS NewsHour. For more media coverage on Professor Katz, please check News Regarding the Center.

Deputy Director

Jeffrey Boase [2008-]
Jeffrey Boase, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the School of Professional Communication at Ryerson University.

He received his PhD from the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto, during which time he spent a year at the Harvard Kennedy School while on a predoctoral fellowship at the National Center for Digital Government. After completing his PhD he spent two years working as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Social Psychology at The University of Tokyo. He then spent three and a half years in the Department of Communication at Rutgers University before moving to Ryerson.

Research Associates

Mark Aakhus [2004-]
Mark Aakhus, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of the Department of Communication at Rutgers University. His work focuses on the emergence and management of conflicts that arise as people attempt to make decisions, solve problems, and learn. He investigates the practices and technologies people implement to regulate and shape their communication and the consequences for how people interact and reason with each other when facing complex situations.

Among the real world sites that he investigate are organizations trying to develop workable information systems, decision-makers trying to sort out disagreement among experts, groups trying to formulate collective action, communities grappling with development issues, couples trying to negotiate divorce settlements, households trying to coordiCraig R. Scottnate the rush of life, and individuals searching for the meaning of good work in their professional practice.

Common among these is a concern with the role and nature of communication to resolve these complex situations. This work connects theory and research on argumentation and social interaction to explain decision-making, conflict resolution, technology, and the organization of work.

Professor Aakhus' empirical investigations point to the significant attention in contemporary society given to designing communication. This yearning to design communication does not mean, however, that design activity is reflective about the assumptions implemented when people attempt to regulate and shape communication through procedures and technologies. Toward this end, he has, along with his colleagues, begun to further articulate key concepts and premises for understanding communication as an object of design and a process of design.

Jennifer Gibbs [2004-]
Jennifer Gibbs, Ph.D, is an Associate Professor of the Department of Communication at Rutgers University. Her research interests include Global virtual teams, globalization, organizational culture, identification and self-presentation in virtual contexts (e.g., global teams, online dating, social networking sites), and social impacts of new technologies on interpersonal and work relationships.

Mor Naaman [2010-]
Before coming to Rutgers, Mor Naaman, Ph.D., worked as a research scientist at Yahoo! Research Berkeley, where he led a team of research engineers and interns investigating the future of multimedia. Even before that, he received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University, and a BA from Tel Aviv University. His professional service includes serving as co-chair of the JCDL 2008 Program Committee, and co-chair of ACM Multimedia 2009's Grand Challenge. He is a recipient of two JCDL best paper awards (in 2004 and 2007). His research interests include social media, multimedia information systems, mobile and ubiquitous computing, and location-based information. His research employs a human-centered research approach to develop data models, algorithms and new applications in these domains. Once developed, these tools allow the study of user behavior, user motivations and the characteristics of application use.

Craig Scott [2006-]
Craig Scott, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of the Department of Communication at Rutgers University. He also is the Director of the Ph.D. Program in Communication and Information at the univeresity. His research interests include Organizational communication, New communication technologies, Issues of work-related identification, Anonymity, and Communication theory.

Matthew Weber [ 2011-]

Matthew Weber, Ph.D, is an Assistant Professor in the School of Communication and Information. He received his PhD in 2010 from the Annenberg School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Southern California. He previously worked as a postdoctoral research associate at the Center for Technology, Entertainment and Media (CTEM) at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. Matthew's research examines organizational change and adaptation, both internal and external, in response to new information communication technology. His recent work focuses on the transformation of the news media industry in the United States in reaction to new forms of media production. This includes a large-scale longitudinal study examining strategies employed by media organizations for disseminating news and information in online networks. Matthew utilizes mixed methods in his work, including social network analysis, archival research and interviews.

Lora Appel [2010-]
Lora is a second semester student in the MCIS program at Rutgers University, and a research assistant to Prof. Katz. She also holds a fellowship with Ethicon, Johnson & Johnson. Lora graduated with an International Bachelor of Business Administration from the Schulich School of Business in Toronto, Canada, and furthered her studies earning a postgraduate certificate in Corporate Communication at Seneca College. She studied on exchange at the ESADE School of Business in Barcelona and at Ghent University in Belgium. Before starting her studies at Rutgers, Lora worked as a Sales Manager for Kraft Canada, completed an internship with the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants and helped organize a 2-week International Pediatric Rehabilitation conference in association with the Universitair Ziekenhuis Ghent Hospital. Lora intends to advance her career in communications in the health industry, and is interested in the possibility of pursuing a PhD.

Frank Bridges [2010-]
Frank is a doctoral student in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University. His research interests include mobile communication as it relates to social journalism and the diffusion of innovations theory. Frank comes to the PhD program with over 20 years experience as a graphic designer which accounts for his second area of study - semiotic analysis of visual communication. Frank finished the MCIS program at Rutgers University in the spring of 2010 by receiving the DiMartini Service Award 2010 and the Best MCIS Capstone Presentation 2010.

Yi-Fan Chen [2004-]
Yi-Fan Chen is an Assistant Professor at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. Her research interest is to understand the impact of new media technology on society and individuals. She has received her PhD degree in Communication, Information, and Library Studies at Rutgers University.

Kalpana David [2004-]
Kalpana Thomas (nee David) has a Ph.D (2007) from SCILS. Her dissertation advisor was Professor James Katz and her dissertation committee consisted of Professors Nick Belkin, John Pavlik and Karen Cerulo (Department of Sociology, Rutgers). She has a B.S. in Physics (1999) and an M.A. in Communication (2001) from Madras University, India. She is interested in social consequences of communication technology, particularly mobile communication technology. She works for Mediavision, a New York – based broadcast media company as VP of Global Business Development.

Daniel Halpern [2010-]
Daniel Halpern earned his bachelor's degree in journalism and his master's degree in political science from Catholic University of Chile. He has directed two documentary films and he is the author of El Pecado de el Rucio (2008, Catalonia) and Gestion de Crisis: Teoria y Practica de un modelo comunicacional (2010, Ril). His research has been published in different Latin American journals. He is a faculty member in the College of Communication at Catholic University of Chile. In 2008 he received the Fulbright Scholarship to start his PhD. At Rutgers Daniel plans to research communication issues related to strategic communication, computer mediated communication and information and communication technologies in organizations.

Soo Yeon Hwang [2007-]
Soo-yeon Hwang is a doctoral candidate in Communication and Information Studies and a research associate at the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers University. She has a master's degree in Information Economics, Management, and Policy from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a bachelor's degree in Mass Communication from Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea. Prior to beginning her doctoral studies, she worked for several years in network software development, ranging from online bulletin board software, web clipping and information reader software for PDAs, to remote router provisioning system at Internet2. Her research interests focus on information and communication technology (ICT) use in everyday life settings. She is currently interested in analyzing latent patterns of ICT user characteristics and their interests through mining individual usage data.

Heewon Kim [2010-]
Heewon Kim is a doctoral student in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University. Her research interests include perceived and enacted social support through mediated communication, mobile devices and their social implications, social networks, and cultural comparison. Her current projects focus on how individuals interact with emerging mobile technologies to construct their personal communities and how Korean government develops new policies reflecting technological and social changes.

Chih-Hui Lai [2006-]
Chih-Hui Lai is a doctoral student in the Department of Communication at Rutgers University. Her research focuses on how individuals, groups and organizations use information and communication technologies (ICTs) to communicate and how relationships evolve or emerge through the process. She analyzes social implications of online and mobile applications and examines how a social network perspective can be salient in helping understand the use of these applications and how that may dovetail with the pursuit of communication among users. She earned her master's degree from Michigan State University.

Sun Kyong Lee [2007-]
Sun Kyong Lee is currently a doctoral candidate and a full-time lecturer in School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University. She earned her M.A.s in communication studies from both Korea University and the University of Kansas. Her research interests include mobile communication, social networks, and communication technology uses in organizational settings. She has presented her work at national and international conferences and her paper on structurational processes of virtual work will be published in International Journal of the Humanities.

Katie Lever-Mazzuto [2005-]
Katie Lever-Mazzuto is an Assistant Professor at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, Connecticut. Her research interests include the social implications of technology use. More specifically, she is interested in how mobile technologies, such as digital music devices and mobile phones areused in public environments. She completed her Ph.D. at Rutgers University.

Satomi Sugiyama [2004-]
Satomi Sugiyama is currently an Assistant Professor at Franklin College Switzerland. Her research interests include communication technologies, fashion and communication, and intercultural communication. She is particularly interested in the influence of mobile communication technologies on social behaviour in a global context. She holds a doctorate in Communication from Rutgers University.

Hyunsook Youn [2010-]
Hyunsook Youn is a second year doctoral student in the School of Communication & Information at Rutgers University. Her research interest is focused on use of communication technology and its impact on social relationships. She is also interested in examining individuals' concerns on privacy issues online and indiviuals' use of communication technology regarding health related issue. She finished her master's degree in Florida State University and her work has been published in CyberPsychology & Behavior, and Health information on the Internet.

Ran Wei [2009-]
Ran Wei, Ph.D. is professor in School of Journalism & Mass Communications at the University of South Carolina. His major research interests are in communication technologies, mobile communication, and media effects. He is a pioneering scholar in the study of mobile telephony and his work on user perceptions of cell phone attributes is widely cited. He edited a special issue on mobile telephony in Asia for Media Asia in 2009. He earned his Ph.D. in mass communication from Indiana University in 1995.

Colleen Bloom [2007-2008]
Sinuk Kang [2005]
Chia-Chien (Emily) Liang [2005]
Patricia Mechael, Ph.D.[2007-2008]
Dan Su [2004-2008]
Shenwei Zhao [2004-2005]

Last Updated:: May 11, 2012