A Northwestern University joint initiative of Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications and the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering & Applied Science. Northwestern University joint initiative of Medill & McCormick School of Engineering.

Advancing news media innovation through exploration & experimentation.

Team

Our management and development team consists of faculty from both the McCormick School of Engineering and the Medill School of Journalism. This is a team that has been working together on various projects for a number of years.

Lab staff

  • Executive Director

    MIRANDA MULLIGAN joined the Lab in late July 2012. Formerly the Design Director for Digital at The Boston Globe, she has been focusing most of her attention on the intersection of journalism and technology for the past couple years. She is a journalist, designer, and educator with over 10 years of experience in print and web design, photography, multimedia, and information graphics reporting. In 2011, Mulligan led the responsive web design approach to The Boston Globe’s new site – BostonGlobe.com – a design and development practice that allows content to be where users are, no matter their device, taking full advantage of the most popular APP on any device: the web browser. She has also worked for The Virginian-Pilot, interned with The South Florida Sun-Sentinel and The Philadelphia Inquirer, and volunteers her time with Society for News Design, Online News Association, and Boston’s Hacks / Hackers chapter.

  • Director of engineering

  • Communications manager

    RYAN GRAFF joined the Lab’s in October 2011. Graff began his career as a newspaper reporter and editor in Colorado, magazine writer, blogger and website editor. He holds an MSJ from the Medill School of Journalism and a certificate in media management from Northwestern’s Media Management Center. Immediately prior to joining the Lab, Graff led marketing and public relations efforts in the Middle East. r-graff@northwestern.edu

  • Operations and projects manager

    JORDAN YOUNG

  • Developers

    SCOTT BRADLEY joined the Lab in April 2012. He holds degrees in engineering and computer science from Purdue University in West Lafayette, and DePaul University in Chicago. His interests range from literature and film to theology and philosophy to computation and artificial intelligence. Scott’s programming focus in recent years has been in the areas of natural language processing, social media mining and aggregation, bioinformatics, and web application design and development.

  • JENNIFER WILSON joined the lab in October 2011. She has worked as a developer at several software startups in the fields of image processing, handheld application development, and web-based mobile application development.

 

Faculty

  • KRISTIAN HAMMOND is Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University, and Director of Northwestern’s Medill–McCormick Center for Innovation in Technology, Media and Journalism. His research focuses on intelligent information systems that attend to user context in automatically searching for information and media, and providing results to those users in powerful and interesting new ways. Professor Hammond is an author of over 100 papers and has served on numerous program committees as well as the Chicago Mayor’s Advisory Council on Technology. Professor Hammond received his Ph.D. from Yale University and was on the faculty of the University of Chicago before joining Northwestern.
  • OWEN YOUNGMAN is Knight Professor of Digital Media Strategy in the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, and Associate Director of Northwestern’s Medill–McCormick Center for Innovation in Technology, Media and Journalism. Professor Youngman’s research focuses on the development, adoption, and consumer utility of technology–based innovations in journalism and media. He joined Northwestern in 2009 after a distinguished career at the Chicago Tribune, where he was responsible for the organization’s focus on innovative technology applications and product development.
  • LARRY BIRNBAUM is Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in the McCormick School of Engineering at
    Northwestern University, and serves on the Management Committee of Northwestern’s Medill–McCormick Center for Innovation in Technology, Media and Journalism. His research focuses on information diversity in search and on technologies for applying human editorial judgment at web scale. Professor Birnbaum has authored over 100 papers and served on numerous program committees. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University and was on the faculty there before joining Northwestern.
  • RICH GORDON is Professor and Director of Digital Innovation in the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, and serves on the Management Committee of Northwestern’s Medill–McCormick Center for Innovation in Technology, Media and Journalism. Before joining Medill, he was the first online director for The Miami Herald. In 2007, he won a Knight News Challenge grant to award scholarships to software developers interested in studying journalism at Medill.
  • JEREMY GILBERT is an Assistant Professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and Northwestern’s Segal Design Institute, teaching media product design and digital innovation. He has directed award-winning, student-based digital projects and helped revamp the interactive curriculum. He created the first interdisciplinary journalism and computer science classes, helped found the Medill, McCormick Center for Innovation in Technology, Media, and Journalism and launch the Knight News Innovation Lab. In addition to teaching, he is researching the future of human-centered news design, especially tools for the creation, consumption and distribution of journalism on mobile devices, tablets and web-based media applications.
  • ZACH WISE is an Emmy Award winning interactive producer and Associate Professor at Northwestern University. Former senior multimedia producer at The New York Times. His work at the Las Vegas Sun and The New York Times has been recognized by the Online News Association, Webby Awards, NPPA Best of Photojournalism, the Pulitzer Prize, the Peabody Awards, the Emmy awards, and numerous other industry honors.

 

Ph.D. Students

  • SHAWN O’BANION is a Ph.D. student in computer science at the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University. His research in the field of artificial intelligence encompasses information retrieval, natural language processing, and machine learning. More specifically, his focus is on building tools for deriving knowledge and insights from social media behavior, including personalized recommendations.
    obanion@u.northwestern.edu
  • PATRICK MCNALLY is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at Northwestern University. His work is focused on machine generated or machine directed experiences. He is interested in the cultural repository that is the internet and how we can build experiences that emerge from filtering the raw information put up at an ever accelerating rate.
  • MIRIAM BOON is a Ph.D. student in the Technology and Social Behavior program, a joint program between the School of Communication and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Her research interests lie at the intersection of computing technology, journalism, science, and democracy. Boon, who has over five years of experience as a science journalist and editor, joined the Lab in June 2012.
  • LISA GANDY is a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at the McCormick School of Engineering. Her research has centered on how data can be used to inform news stories. She has worked on two major projects: Congressional Close Up and News at Seven. Congressional Close Up makes the vast amount of voting and campaign contribution data available on the web more accessible to voters. News at Seven automatically creates news shows by analyzing and skillfully combining online news and reader comments to create a unique user experience. See Congressional Close Up at work here.
    lisagandy@u.northwestern.edu

 

Advisory Board

  • JOHN BRACKEN is the director of media innovation at the Knight Foundation and will head the board. John is an expert in online innovation and social entrepreneurship and previously served as a program officer at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, where he managed investments in technology and innovation and global Internet freedom, and worked to strengthen nonprofit start-ups.
  • JAY BUDZIK is chief technical officer at Perfect Market, where Jay’s work helps the company to increase engagement, traffic and revenue for more than 45 onlinepublishers including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, South Bend Tribune, Boston Globe, and Philly.com. Jay earned a Ph.D. in computer science at Northwestern. His work at the University led to the founding of Intellext, where he served as CTO.
  • JULIANNA COLE is senior vice president and chief information officer at the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago, where she is responsible for leading and advancing information technology strategies and practices. Julianna previously served as vice president and chief technical officer at Johnson Publishing and as VP and CTO at Tribune Interactive, where she managed technology strategy, operations, software development and risk management for more than 60 web sites and interactive products.
  • MICHELE McLELLAN is founder and organizer of Block by Block: Community New Summit, a network of small, entrepreneurial local news sites. Michele founded Block by Block in 2010 and based the program on her work as a Reynolds Journalism Institute fellow in 2009-10. A former Nieman Fellow, she has served in critical roles on digital innovation projects with the Knight Foundation and Poynter Institute. She is the author or co-author of “Emerging Economics of Community News,” “Getting Local: How Nonprofit News Ventures Seek Sustainability” and “News, Improved: How America’s Newsrooms are Learning to Change.”
  • MATT MOOG is founder and chief executive officer of Viewpoints.com, a leading provider of consumer product reviews, and founder of BuiltInChicago.org, an online community for digital technology entrepreneurs in Chicago. Prior to founding Viewpoints, Matt was CEO at CoolSavings, and led the company during a five-year growth period in which revenue increased from $21 million to $80 million. Matt was named to Crain’s Tech 25 in 2011 and to Crain’s 40 under 40 in 2005. He has been nominated for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for bothCoolSavings and Viewpoints..
  • MICHAEL ZIMBALIST is vice president of research and development operations at New York Times Company. In 2006 Michael founded the company’s R&D group, which has developed new ways to bring the NYT brand assets to market through integrated marketing partnerships and new advertising products, resulting in millions of dollars in new revenues. He was formerly co-founder and president of the Online Publishers Association.

 

Follow @knightlab