While Hamid Ekbia joined SLIS as an Associate Professor of Information Science this semester, his ties with Indiana University and the faculty of the School of Library and Information Science go back several years.
Ekbia co-authored "Network Organizations: Symmetric Cooperation or Multivalent Negotiation" (The Information Society, 2005) with the late SLIS Professor Rob Kling and "Incentive Structures in Knowledge Management" (Encyclopedia of Knowledge Management, 2004) with SLIS faculty member Noriko Hara.
He received his Ph.D. at Indiana University, Bloomington in 2003 with a double major in Computer Science and Cognitive Science. In 2002-2003 he was a visiting lecturer at the IU School of Informatics. At IU, his interest in Social Informatics led to a close collaboration with Rob Kling, with whom he conducted research on topics of network organizations, knowledge management, and regimes of social truth [biographical notes].
Ekbia is teaching SLIS-L542 Introduction to Human Computer Interaction this semester.
His research interests include how knowledge is developed, transformed, shared, and mobilized in and among individuals, organizations, and communities, and how technology mediates these processes.
Research projects have addressed the development of techno-scientific knowledge in modern disciplines such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the cognitive and social aspects of sense making in distributed environments, and the mobilization of knowledge in new forms of organization and collective practice such as Free/Open Source Software development. He is also interested in critical GIS, spatial cognition, and what he calls the "informational style" of thinking. He hopes to expand this research at IU through collaboration with his colleagues in information, cognitive, and social sciences.
His forthcoming book, Artificial Dreams: The Quest for Non-Biological Intelligence (Cambridge University Press, 2007), is a socio-philosophical critique of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Before coming to SLIS, Ekbia was an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Redlands in California. He received his doctoral degree in Computer and Cognitive Science from IU and a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles. His Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering was from Abadan Institute of Technology, Abadan, Iran (his home country).
Hamid Ekbia adds to the depth of SLIS research areas, as well as a global perspective. He joins SLIS colleagues from Ireland, Lebanon, Germany, Korea, Bangladesh, Israel, Japan... His office is located in SLIS, Room 019, Wells Library, IU Bloomington.
Posted January 23, 2007