About Us

Northwestern University Knight Lab is a community of designers, developers, students, and educators working on experiments designed to push journalism into new spaces.

Zach Wise
The Podcast Discoverability group present their findings to the rest of the Knight Lab Studio class.

The Lab provides an open, collaborative environment for interdisciplinary exploration and conversation, where students and professionals learn together and from one another. In short, we’re energized by hard questions worth answering; we believe in the process as much as the product.

We’re probably best known for our innovative suite of open-source, adaptable, and lightweight tools for media makers. The most popular, TimelineJS, has been used by more than 250,000 people to tell stories seen hundreds of millions of times, and is available in more than sixty languages. We also develop prototypes of tools for reporting, data management, research, and storytelling, often in connection with Northwestern classes. Students from our community have gone on to work at the New York Times, Vox Media, NPR, Medium, FiveThirtyEight, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, and more.

Faculty & Staff

Ashir Badami

Senior Lecturer

Product, marketing, and UX geek with a (not so) secret crush on journalism and digital media. Spent the last 10+ years working in growth companies across a range of disciplines including digital content strategy, product design, and product marketing. Leads the Media Innovation & Content Strategy specialization along with Professor Richelle Gordon.

Jeremy Gilbert

Knight Chair in Digital Media Strategy, Medill

Jeremy explores the intersection of technology, journalism and media strategy. Formerly of Washington Post, National Geographic and Poynter among others.

Joe Germuska

Chief Nerd

Joe runs Knight Lab’s technology, professional staff and student fellows. Before joining us, Joe was on the Chicago Tribune News Apps team. He's the project lead for CensusReporter.org and a board member of City Bureau.

Pam Dempsey

Program Director, Data-Driven Reporting Project

Pam is the past executive director of Investigate Midwest and an online, print and radio journalist, who has developed community engagement programs, investigative reporting workshops and helped coordinate the start-up of two online newsrooms that heavily emphasize data journalism.

Scott Bradley

Senior Engineer

Mercurial technologist currently focused on electronics and natural language processing.

Zach Wise

Professor

Emmy winning interactive producer & Associate Professor @NorthwesternU, @KnightLab. Formerly of The New York Times. Creator of TimelineJS & StoryMapJS

Alumni

Faculty Collaborations

Emily Withrow

Assistant Professor

Fernando Diaz

Lecturer

Owen Youngman

Knight Professor of Digital Media Strategy

Rich Gordon

Professor and Director of Digital Innovation

Professional Staff

Divya Sasidharan

Engineer, 2016-2017

Heather Billings

Designer / Developer, 2014-2016

Jordan Young

Operations and Project Manager, 2011-2015

Mago Torres

Data-Driven Reporting Project Program Director, 2022

Matt Mills

Software Director, Interim, 2012

Mike Silver

Executive Director, 2011-2012

Miranda Mulligan

Executive Director, 2012-2014

Rebecca Poulson

Engineer, 2016-2020

Ryan Graff

Communications and Outreach Manager, 2011-2016

Professional Fellows

Aaron U. Salmon

Design Fellow

Manuel Aristarán

International Fellow

Steve Tarzia

Professional Fellow

Ph.D. Students

Fellows

Aditi Bhandari

Student Fellow

Akhil Kambhammettu

Device Lab Fellow

Alex Duner

Student Fellow

Allen Zeng

Undergraduate Fellow

Alma Bahman

Graduate Fellow

Anne Li

Undergraduate Fellow

Anushka Patil

Undergraduate Fellow

Arjuna Soriano

Graduate Fellow

Ashesha Mehrotra

Graduate Fellow

Ashley Wu

Undergraduate Fellow

Audrey Valbuena

Community Coordinator

Ben Singer

Device Lab Fellow

Benjamin Din

Student Fellow

Bomani McClendon

Student Fellow

Cary Lee

Undergraduate Fellow

Cathy He

Fellow

Chris Alan Williams

Graduate Fellow

Dan Keemahill

Undergraduate Fellow

Dhrumil Mehta

Undergraduate Fellow

Edward Kimble

Learning Ambassador

Emily Chow

Undergraduate Fellow

Emily Ferber

Undergraduate Fellow

Eunice Lee

Student Fellow

Farah Mohammed

Graduate Fellow

Gloria Oh

Undergraduate Fellow

Gus Wezerek

Undergraduate Fellow

Hilary Fung

Undergraduate Fellow

Hilary Sharp

Undergraduate Fellow

Isabella Jiao

Device Lab Fellow

J Kyle White-Sullivan

Device Lab Fellow

Jeff Birori

Device Lab Fellow

Jessica Soberman

Graduate Fellow

Joon Park

Fellow

Josh Shi

Student Fellow

Kaila Nichols

Equipment Manager

Katherine Nagasawa

Undergraduate Fellow

Katie Park

Undergraduate Fellow

Katie Zhu

Undergraduate Fellow

Keyla Athalia

Learning Ambassador

Kimberly Lee

Undergraduate Fellow

Kinsey Erickson

Device Lab Fellow

KK Rebecca Lai

Undergraduate Fellow

Lingwei Cheng

Graduate Fellow

Luke Rague

Graduate Fellow

Mallory Busch

Undergraduate Fellow

Marguerite McNeal

Graduate Fellow

Mary Truong

Device Lab Fellow

Matt Gelfand

Graduate Fellow

Matt Hong

Undergraduate Fellow

Michael Martinez

Student Fellow

Montserrat Vazquez-Posada

Device Lab Fellow

Neil Holt

Graduate Fellow

Nia Adurogbola

Device Lab Fellow

Nicole Zhu

Undergraduate Fellow

Nikhil Pai

Undergraduate Fellow

Patricia Gomes Lima

Graduate Fellow

Priya Krishnakumar

Undergraduate Fellow

Rhiannon O'Berry

Learning Ambassador

Rosalie Chan

Student Fellow

Ross Patten

Librarian

Ryan McAfee

Undergraduate Fellow

Sam Bernitz

Device Lab Fellow

Sarah Adler

Undergraduate Fellow

Shelly Tan

Undergraduate Fellow

Shikhar Mohan

Undergraduate Fellow

Stephen Autar

Undergraduate Fellow

Suyeon Son

Undergraduate Fellow

Tanveer Ali

Graduate Fellow

Tyler Fisher

Undergraduate Fellow

Whitney Pow

Device Lab Fellow

Zaria Howell

Librarian