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NCSA’s Matthew Turk joins School of Information Sciences faculty


Matthew Turk of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), has recently joined the School of Information Sciences (iSchool) faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as an assistant professor. Turk will retain the same NCSA projects and groups, including group leader of NCSA’s Data Exploration Lab, as a faculty affiliate. He also holds a joint appointment with the Department of Astronomy.

Turk’s research areas include the organization of and meaning behind data, how groups of individuals collaborate in an inherently competitive system, and how the interaction of software and the human experience of knowledge generation can be influenced to increase productivity or understanding.

“Sometimes this takes the form of developing and implementing algorithms for analysis and visualization,” says Turk, “but in other cases, it involves understanding the way that communities form around software and scientific processes.”

Turk came to Illinois in 2014. He earned a doctoral degree in physics from Stanford University and completed postdoctoral work at the University of California at San Diego as well as an National Science Foundation (NSF) Fellowship in Cyberinfrasture for Transformative Computational Science at Columbia University.

Turk is a co-PI on the five-year, $5 million NSF-funded Whole Tale project which will enable researchers to examine, transform, and re-publish research data that was used in an article, with the aim of helping to ensure reproducibility and pave the way for new discoveries.

“The iSchool is in a unique position—the research going on, the world-class faculty, students, and staff, and the new programs (such as information management) make it one of the most exciting places to be on campus,” Turk says.

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