berkeleyischool-orientation-2013.jpg
Aug 30, 2013

I School Kicks Off the Year by Welcoming New Students

The School of Information kicked off the 2013–2014 academic year by welcoming 60 new students to South Hall, tying last-year’s record for the School’s largest entering class.

The four new doctoral students and 56 new MIMS students arrived on campus on Wednesday, August 28, for a day-long orientation, before beginning classes on Thursday.

The new students hail from ten countries on four continents. They have a wide range of backgrounds, with previous degrees in cognitive science, studio art, biochemistry, physics, history, computer science, business administration, politics, sociology, psychology, literature, mathematics, graphic design, and more.

The majority of the new master’s students are returning to school from the working world, with an average of six years of information-related experience in fields like health care, media, consulting, manufacturing, publishing, financial services, advertising, government, software development, technology, and education.

Their résumés include entries like:

  • Software specialist for digital content at Google
  • Digital & managing editor of Habitat Magazine
  • Data scientist at SocialCode
  • Program manager of web search for Sogou.com
  • Operations manager for BikeLink™
  • Deputy assistant director of the Japan International Cooperation Agency
  • Consultant at Deloitte
  • Project manager for the Natural Resource Defense Council
  • Researcher at Kaiser Permanente
  • Co-founder of Apples & Wages, a food justice incubator for social enterprises

The I School also welcomes four new doctoral students this year:

Michael Berger has a passion for both technology and law. As a practicing lawyer and as a clerk for the Supreme Court of British Columbia, Canada, Berger has observed more and more legal interactions taking place online, rather than in the courthouse. Berger is interested in how this phenomenon affects both the legal profession and access to the legal system — and how the design of online legal systems could affect society in the future. “The potential for information technology to create solutions to the social justice problems that I have observed in my legal career is what excites me most,” he says.

Nick Merrill has a background in both cognitive science and design, and is interested in how everyday software can be engineered to enhance its users’ information-processing abilities. “Better software makes us smarter even when we step away from it,” he explains. Rather than studying “educational” software, Merrill hopes to focus on games or other everyday software, where the cognitive training is natural byproduct of the software interaction. He also hopes to study designing for the brain-computer interface — using brain scanning to directly control software or devices. Interactive video games are especially good at training players’ cognition, but researchers aren’t entirely sure why. Answering these questions could help software designers incorporate cognitive training in a wider range of software.

Robert On has spent the last decade working as a software engineer on Google’s economics team, which is led by the I School’s former dean, Hal Varian. At Google, On has become increasingly aware of the social and economic impacts of information technology, and the ways that social and economic forces interact with technology use. At the I School, he plans to study the information economy in the developing world, to develop and incentivize the use of socially and culturally appropriate, networked information systems to help stimulate economic development in emerging regions.

Elaine Sedenberg witnessed first-hand the disconnect between scientists and policymakers when she worked at a university technology transfer office, where bureaucrats and scientists struggled to understand each other and where promising scientific ideas were stifled by bureaucratic or regulatory burdens. Although her background is in biotechnology research, she is equally enthused by policy concerns, and has spent the past two years at the Science and Technology Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. At the I School, Sedenberg plans to study the ways policy infrastructure can better serve the scientific community, to become one of the next generation of policy hybrids — scientists equipped with the multi-methodological tools to study complex problems faced by both policymakers and practitioners.

Last updated:

October 4, 2016