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.

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 Management and Leadership concentration in the Medill Masters program.

James Lee

Associate University Librarian for Academic Innovation and Associate Professor

James Lee, PhD is an information science scholar who works at the intersection of data science, digital humanities, and network analysis. His overarching interest lies in how the humanities can add nuance to the methods of machine learning and network science.

Jeremy Gilbert

Knight Chair in Digital Media Strategy

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

Jill Braverman Blackman

Director of Data Journalism

Jill immerses students in cutting-edge data journalism techniques, teaching them to transform raw numbers into captivating narratives and engaging stories. Leveraging her Chicago Tribune experience and role as an Online News Association founder, Jill blends technology and storytelling to prepare students for journalism's future.

Joe Germuska

Chief Nerd

Joey 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.

Matt Kiefer

Assistant Professor

Matt's an investigative editor and software developer who teaches data journalism at Medill. Previously with WBEZ, the Washington Post and the Chicago Reporter, Matt was a 2020 JSK Fellow and created FOIAmail, a framework to automate public records requests.

Nicholas Robert Hagar

Postdoctoral Scholar, Generative AI in the Newsroom Initiative

Nick is a postdoc developing genAI applications for newsrooms. They research how collective attention works in large, complex systems: how people discover information online, why things get popular, and what influences content creators. Formerly at the New York Times, Meta, and others.

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