Strengthening and broadening the SoI community through education

"Learning is experience. Everything else is just information." - Albert Einstein

Our educational mission is to advance interdisciplinary understanding, knowledge, skills of analysis, and application of science of information techniques and tools to problems across multiple domains at both undergraduate and graduate levels. The education program has developed an Information Frontiers Initiative with two foundational goals and supporting activities. View our education outcomes summary.

Goal 1: Build and support a community of practice in the science of information

• Strengthen the community through student workshops annually that increase knowledge exchange, skills development, and foster research collaborations.
• Build research collaboration experiences by forming and supporting student research teams across all Center institutions. These teams work together throughout the year.
• Broaden the community Students from a broad range of universities participate in activities. Over 100 universities have been represented at our activities. In addition to workshops and student teams, a range of seminars are offered, both online and in person.
• Increase SoI trained scientists in the workforce Our alumni attain academic and industry positions in the U.S. Several of our postdocs have attained excellent academic appointments, and continue to broaden our community. You can view our current undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral members.

Goal 2: Develop an online hub of courses, modules, and resources supporting the emerging science of information field

• A searchable organized online library integral to the Center’s soihub.org website offering research & training resources. The resources range from video-based tutorials, topic modules, advanced topic seminars, student presentations, classroom-based course materials, research team documents, faculty teaching presentations, journal papers, Phd theses, research posters, interviews & articles.
• The purpose of creating this hub of resources is to serve the broader science community in support of science of information literacy and skills at both foundational and advanced levels. The Center supports the development of new training resources through our partners, and in the broader community.

Meet Our Team

Brent Ladd
Director of Education
Purdue University

Deepak Kumar
Associate Director
Professor of Computer Science, Adjunct Faculty
Philosophy, Nueral and Behavioral Sciences
Bryn Mawr College

Mark Daniel Ward
Associate Director, Assistant Director for Education
Assistant Professor
Statistics
Purdue University
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Mike Atwell
Multimedia Specialist
Purdue University

Aaron Watson
Multimedia Production Assistant
Purdue University