Sophia B.

Liu
connectivIT Lab
Technology, Media and Society PhD Program at the ATLAS Institute
University of Colorado at Boulder
430 UCB, Boulder, Colorado 80309-0430, USA
E-mail: Sophia.Liu@colorado.edu
Phone: 630-729-4216

EDUCATION
University of Colorado at Boulder (Fall 2005 – present)
PhD Candidate: Technology, Media and Society interdisciplinary program at
the Alliance for Technology, Learning and Society (ATLAS) Institute
Dissertation Proposal Defense: January 27, 2009
Graduate Advisor: Professor Leysia Palen in the Department of Computer Science

ISCRAM-TIEMS Summer School (June 14 – 22, 2006)

Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM) – The International
Emergency Management Society (TIEMS) Summer School at Tilburg University in the Netherlands

University of California, Irvine (September 2000 – September 2004)

B.A.: Social Science specializing in Research and Analytical Methods – Honors
Two Minors: Information and Computer Science; Digital Arts

University of Sussex, England (September 2003 – June 2004)

Education Abroad Program for one academic year in my senior year

FELLOWSHIP AND AWARD

National Science Foundation (June 2007 – June 2010)
National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship awarded in 2006 for
“Public Expressions: Peer-to-Peer Communications in Response to Crises” proposal

AAUW American Fellowship Alternate (April 2010)

ISCRAM 2008 Conference (May 2008)

Received the Mike Meleshkin award for best PhD student paper award

RESEARCH INTERESTS
Crisis informatics, cultural heritage informatics, community informatics, social computing,
social media, Web 2.0, human-computer interaction (HCI), computer supported cooperative
work (CSCW), design studies, information design, social media probes, reflective design,
web mashups, public journalism, participatory culture, socially-distributed curation

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RESEARCH EXPERIENCE

connectivIT Lab at University of Colorado, Boulder (Spring 2007 – Summer 2007)

Research Assistant for Professor Leysia Palen in the connectivIT Research Lab

Natural Hazards Center at University of Colorado, Boulder (Fall 2005 – December 2006)
Research Assistant for Professor Kathleen Tierney at the Natural Hazards Center

IBM Almaden Research Center (Summer 2005)

Summer internship with Dr. John Tang, collaborating with Dr Michael Muller and Dr. Tom Moran

University of California, Irvine (Summer 2003)

Research Assistant for Prof Paul Dourish at the School of Information and Computer Sciences

RESEARCH ACTIVITIES AND PRESENTATIONS

Meeting with the Regional Administrative Board in Gothenburg, Sweden 2009

Presented “ICTs and Social Media in Critical Environments” on May 18, 2009
Information Officers from four municipalities across Sweden attended to learn more about how
formal organizations in Sweden can incorporate social media in emergency management

Colorado Celebration of Women in Computing 2008

Presented “On-Line Photo Sharing in Times of Disaster: Going from Study to Design”

ISCRAM-TIEMS Summer School 2006

Presented “Integrating ICT-Supported Public Communication and Participation for Crisis Response”

Natural Hazards Center at University of Colorado at Boulder 2005-2006

Graduate research assistant for the Responding to Crises and Unexpected Events – Information
Technology Research (RESCUE-ITR) project: an interdisciplinary effort that brings computer
scientists, engineers, social scientists, and disaster science experts together to explore technological
innovations during crisis response
Focused on Emergent Multi-Organizational Networks (EMONs) in disaster response; information
dissemination in extreme events, technology adoption issues, and privacy issues

SERVICE ACTIVITIES

Student Representative and ISCRAM Live chair on the Programme Committee for ISCRAM 2010
Reviewed conference papers for Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management
(ISCRAM) Conference in 2008, 2009, 2010
Reviewed paper for Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI) 2010 International Working Conference

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JOURNAL PUBLICATIONS

Liu, Sophia B. and Leysia Palen. (2010). The New Cartographers: Crisis Map Mashups and the
Emergence of Neogeographic Practice. Cartography and Geographic Information Science Special
Issue: New Directions in Hazards and Disaster Research, 37, 1, 69-90.

Palen, Leysia, Sarah Vieweg, Sophia B. Liu, and Amanda Hughes. (2009). Crisis in a Networked
World: Features of Computer-Mediated Communication in the April 16, 2007 Virginia Tech
Event. Social Science Computer Review: Special Issue e-Social Science, 467-480. Sage Publication.

HIGHLY COMPETITIVE CONFERENCE PUBLICATIONS ( < 25% Acceptance Rate)

Liu, Sophia B. (2010). Grassroots Heritage in the Crisis Context: A Social Media Probes
Approach to Studying Heritage in a Participatory Age. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on
Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI 2010 Doctoral Colloquium.

Palen, Leysia and Sophia B. Liu (2007). Citizen Communications in Crisis: Anticipating a Future
of ICT-Supported Participation. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in
Computing Systems CHI 2007, 727-736.

Palen, Leysia, Sarah Vieweg, Jeannette Sutton, Sophia B. Liu, and Amanda Hughes. (2007). Crisis
Informatics: Studying Crisis in a Networked World. Proceedings of the Third International
Conference on E-Social Science, Ann Arbor, MI, Oct 7-9, 2007.

OTHER PEER-REVIEWED CONFERENCE PAPERS

Liu, Sophia B. (2010). The Rise of Curated Crisis Content. Proceedings of the 7th Information
Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM) Conference – Seattle, Washington, USA,
May 2010.

Liu, Sophia B. and Leysia Palen. (2009). Spatiotemporal Mashups: A Survey of Current Tools to
Inform Next Generation Crisis Support Tools. Proceedings of the 6th International ISCRAM
Conference, J. Landgren and S. Jul (Eds.), Gothenburg, Sweden.

Liu, Sophia B., Leysia Palen, Jeannette Sutton, Amanda Hughes, and Sarah Vieweg. (2008). In
Search of the Bigger Picture: The Emergent Role of On-Line Photo Sharing in Times of
Disaster. Proceedings of the 5th International ISCRAM Conference, Washington, DC, 140-149.

Hughes, Amanda L., Leysia Palen, Jeannette Sutton, Sophia B. Liu, and Sarah Vieweg. (2008).
“Site-Seeing” in Disaster: An Examination of On-Line Social Convergence. Proceedings of the
file://localhost/message/%253CA26E5A9D81604FF3BC3A379A1DC00215@userPC%253
E5th International ISCRAM Conference, Washington, DC, 324-333.

Vieweg, Sarah, Leysia Palen, Sophia B. Liu, Amanda Hughes, Sarah Vieweg, and Jeannette Sutton.
(2008). Collective Intelligence in Disaster: Examination of the Phenomenon in the Aftermath of
the 2007 Virginia Tech Shootings. Proceedings of the 5th International ISCRAM Conference,
Washington, DC, 44-54.

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DOCTORAL COLLOQUIUM PAPERS

Liu, Sophia B. (2010). Grassroots Heritage in the Crisis Context: A Social Media Probes
Approach to Studying Heritage in a Participatory Age. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on
Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI 2010 Doctoral Colloquium.

Liu, Sophia B. (2009). Informing Design of Next Generation Social Media to Support Crisis-
Related Grassroots Heritage. Proceedings of the 6th International Information Systems for Crisis
Response and Management (ISCRAM) Conference Doctoral Consortium.

WORKSHOP PAPER, BOOK CHAPTER, AND MAGAZINE ARTICLE

Liu, Sophia B and Ayala Iacucci, Anahi. (2010). Crisis Map Mashups in a Participatory Age.
ACSM Bulletin, June issue, pp. 10-14.

Liu, Sophia B. (2010). The Emerging Ethics of Studying Social Media Use with a Heritage Twist.
Workshop at the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work CSCW 2010,
“Revisiting Research Ethics in the Facebook Era: Challenges in Emerging CSCW Research.”

Liu, Sophia B., Leysia Palen, Jeannette Sutton, Amanda Hughes, and Sarah Vieweg. (2009).
Citizen Photojournalism During Crisis Events. In Allan, S. and Thorsen, E. (Eds), Citizen
Journalism: Global Perspectives. New York: Peter Lang.

Palen, Leysia, Starr Roxanne Hiltz, and Sophia B. Liu (2007). Online Forums Supporting
Grassroots Participation in Emergency Preparedness and Response. Communications of the
ACM, 50, 3, (March 2007): 54-58.