The Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Illinois (GSLIS) is pleased to announce that Victoria Stodden has joined the GSLIS faculty.
A leading figure in the area of reproducibility in computational science, Stodden is exploring how can we better ensure the reliability and usefulness of scientific results in the face of increasingly sophisticated computational approaches to research. Her work addresses a wide range of topics, including standards of openness for data and code sharing, legal and policy barriers to disseminating reproducible research, robustness in replicated findings, cyberinfrastructure to enable reproducibility, and scientific publishing practices.
"Increasingly we form theories and make consequential decisions based on applications of highly complex methods applied to vast quantities of information," notes GSLIS Dean Allen Renear. "It is now more important than ever that both methods and data be accessible to other researchers within an infrastructure of policies and practices that support independent confirmation and reuse. The potential benefits include safer, fairer, more accurate, and more effective science. Victoria has been expertly directing national attention to this issue. And she has shown that while computational approaches may present new challenges for ensuring useful reliable scientific discoveries, they also present new opportunities for addressing those challenges. We are very excited to have Victoria at GSLIS."
“GSLIS is such a compelling and natural place to teach and do research on the impact of digitization on scholarly research and dissemination practices. I am excited to be joining a forward thinking community of outstanding faculty and students deeply engaged at the interface of information and technology—a community emphasizing not only excellence in scholarly research but also innovation in teaching and mentorship, interdisciplinary breadth, and the spirit of technological creativity embodied by the university,” said Stodden.
Stodden will hold an affiliate faculty appointment with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) in addition to affiliate faculty appointments in the College of Law, the Department of Computer Science, and the Department of Statistics.
“Victoria will establish and lead an interdisciplinary research team at NCSA, leveraging the breadth of activities and scientific applications at the center, as well as those in GSLIS and other academic units” stated NCSA Director Ed Seidel. “Victoria is an exemplar for the type of interdisciplinary faculty we are jointly recruiting with academic units across the university as NCSA develops faculty-led research teams to tackle complex, interdisciplinary problems, and advance our position as a world leading center for applications in simulation, modeling and advanced data-intensive computing.”
“Computer Science sees terrific synergies between our growing focus on big data technologies and Victoria’s foundational work on reproducibility,” said Rob A. Rutenbar, head of the Computer Science Department. “We’re really happy she chose Illinois.”
Stodden co-chairs the NSF Advisory Committee for CyberInfrastructure and is a member of the NSF Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Advisory Committee. She also serves on the National Academies Committee on Responsible Science: Ensuring the Integrity of the Research Process and is a member of the NCBI Board of Scientific Counselors for the NIH National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central National Advisory Committee.
Previously an assistant professor of statistics at Columbia University, Stodden taught courses in data science, reproducible research, and statistical theory and was affiliated with the Institute for Data Sciences and Engineering. She co-edited two books released this year, Privacy, Big Data, and the Public Good: Frameworks for Engagement published by Cambridge University Press and Implementing Reproducible Research published by Taylor & Francis.
Stodden earned both her PhD in statistics and her law degree from Stanford University. She also holds a master’s degree in economics from the University of British Columbia and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Ottawa. Before joining Columbia’s faculty, she was a research fellow at Harvard Law School, a postdoctoral fellow at MIT Sloan School of Management, and a Kauffman Fellow in Law and Innovation in the Information Society Project at Yale Law School.