A collaboration between the College of Communication and Information PhD student and  School of Information Sciences professor has resulted in innovative research that reaches into the future of AI-powered voice digital assistants and explores how it can be more diverse, equitable, and inclusive.

When Joseph Winberry was still a master’s student at SIS, he was a graduate teaching assistant to Associate Professor Devendra Potnis and also assisted in research. Both Potnis and Winberry are interested in social innovation, social justice, and the role information sciences can play in both of those areas.

Katie Knight has traveled from one end of the information sciences highway to the other – from public libraries to archives, and from archives to metadata.

As part of her job as an assistant librarian at the New York School of Design, she cataloged and archived items requiring metadata tagging. It was then that she found a new love within the information sciences, and pursued a job at Oak Ridge National Lab that focused on data and inventive solutions.

When Cassandra Huang graduated from high school in her home country of Taiwan, her General Scholastic Ability Test results gave her several options as to what she could pursue in college. For her, it came down to a choice between Chinese literature study and library information science; she chose the latter.

When Danielle Pollock was an undergraduate, she and a friend devised a plan to open an independent bookstore someday. The rise of online shopping and e-books stymied their dreams, but actually led to some of the research work that the UT PhD alum does today.

“I always knew I was interested in libraries – not just that I liked books, but I liked doing research. When I was looking at potential master’s, I knew that if there was one thing I wanted to do for the rest of my life, librarianship would be that,” she said.

University of Tennessee College of Communication and Information doctoral student Kevin Mallary was diving into information science during his undergraduate and master’s programs in communication at Wake Forest University before he even knew what information science was. At the time, he was focusing his research on website accessibility for users with disabilities.

“When I go back and look at all the references I used, what I cited was literature from information sciences. I didn’t have a clue that [information sciences] was what I was actually studying,” he said.

Crystal Sherline didn’t think she wanted to get a PhD; she was working as a library director of a small, rural library, and had already been through the rigorous PhD experience with a spouse.

“I had a couple of patrons I was very close to, who were older and worldly. They told me, ‘You need to go do a PhD.’ I contemplated for a couple of years, but I’m a lifetime learner,” Sherline said.