Nada Attar is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science in the College of Science - Computer Science Department at SJSU. Attar’s work focuses on Computer Vision and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Her recent research in HCI can play a critical role in teaching the innovation of user interface design and implementation of high-performance applications, while considering the ethics and diversity in computer science. Her work focuses on ethnocentric and gender biases and how it can be applied via the use of human-computer interface. Attar’s research in Computer Vision focuses on Facial Expression Recognition (FER), where racial and gender bias could be embedded in the datasets. Her current studies investigate building models to measure bias in computer vision datasets. Attar received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of Massachusetts in Boston with a focus on user experience and performance optimization using cognitive state measurement. She has a Master's in Computer Science from Tufts University concentrated on human computer interaction. She completed her post-doctoral fellowship at Schepens Eye Research Institute - Harvard Medical School, working on driving simulation measuring eye movement and facial expression data of users.
Dr. Souvick “Vic” Ghosh is an Assistant Professor at the School of Information at San Jose State University. He is the Academic Coordinator for the undergraduate degree program (BS) in Information Science and Data Analytics and the Director of the Intelligent Conversational Agents and Neural Networks Lab (ICANN) at SJSU. Ghosh also serves as the AI Consultant for the InterPARES Trust AI and the Chair for the ASIS&T IDEA Artificial Intelligence Institute. Prior to joining SJSU, he completed his Ph.D. in Information Science from Rutgers University in 2020. He is a mixed methods researcher who combines interdisciplinary concepts from artificial intelligence, machine learning, and human-computer interaction (HCI) to improve voice-based assistants and design systems for the social good. He developed automated AI solutions for complex socio-technical problems such as cyberbullying, fake news, community question-answering, and PII (personally identifiable information) disclosure. Of particular use to this project is Ghosh’s research using a mixed-methods approach to combine concepts from AI and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) to improve voice-based assistants.
Dr. Darra Hofman is an Assistant Professor and Program Coordinator (Master of Archives and Records Administration) in the School of Information at San José State University, San José California, USA. Dr. Hofman received her Ph.D. in library, archival, and information science from The University of British Columbia in 2020. She completed her M.L.I.S. from the University of Kentucky and her J.D. and B.A. (honors) from Arizona State University. Her research examines the intersection of archives, technology, and law, exploring how records support human rights and human thriving.
Villagran comes to the project with a unique combination of expertise in cultural competence and intelligence, and legal informatics. Building out of this research focus, Villagran frequently consults in diversity, equity and inclusion, and cultural intelligence, and is a recognized leader in the domain, as evidence by her keynotes talks to Pennsylvania Library Association, Minnesota Library Association, Amigos Library Services, Arizona Library Association, and California Dialysis Council. Her prior research focused on the phenomena of cultural intelligence within different segments: law firm libraries, special libraries including corporate, medical, law; state-specific libraries, and the application of cultural intelligence within library and information science. Villagran also has an important body of work on marginalized populations: for example, immigrant communities (Ndumu et al, 2022), trans* people (Villagran & Long, 2022), LGBTQIA+ (Villagran & Hofman, 2022, 2023), and first-generation students (Bernier, et al, 2020). Villagran, Hofman and Ghosh together have a scholarly project, Legally, Algorithmically, and Culturally Aware Systems of Accountability (LACASA), for which Villagran and Hofman obtained initial funding from the Association for Library and Information Science Education, examining digital privacy for marginalized communities, including queer communities.
Villagran chairs the SJSU School of Information Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility committee. From 2018 to present, she has conducted an annual faculty survey of diversity and teaching, and coordinated several diversity webinar series and symposiums including Deaf Culture & History (2023), Hispanic Heritage Month (2021, 2022), Humble leadership (2021), mindfulness, cultural humility, and library services to immigrants (2020), and transgender inclusion in libraries (2019). Dr. Villagran chairs, and Drs. Ghosh and Hofman are members of the Academic Committee on Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Social Justice for SJSU’s College of Professional and Global Education. During their tenure on that committee, they have initiated a project on Anti-Oppressive Pedagogy that has produced, so far, a literature review, webinar, and training on anti-oppressive pedagogy within library and information science and data science and a training program for college faculty on implementing anti-oppressive pedagogy within the classroom; the CIRCLE team will build on these experiences.
