IOLUG is proud to announce Jerica Copeny as the upcoming keynote speaker for its 2019 spring conference.
Keynote
Past, Present, Future of Trailblazing with Data for Social Change
Living in our current society where data is all around us, how can it be used as a tool for social change? Jerica Copeny explores a cross disciplinary approach on working to build civic data science projects in environments where this work is being newly developed. Her talk will explore how data has been used as a tool for social change from the past examination information trailblazers as Ida B. Wells, Jane Addams and W.E.B. Du Bois, and discuss presently how various types of organizations have begun to define how they are working to have an impact with data. In a TEDx style reflective discussion, Copeny will go over lessons learned, poignant discoveries in being one of the first data scientist in the United States to work in a public library. Her work seeks to answers, what is the public library’s role in utilizing data science for social change? Through the sharing of her experiences she will explore techniques on how each of us can work to answer how we can influence social change for the future with data.
Bio
Jerica Copeny is one of the first data scientists in the nation to work in a public library. She is the Civic Data Scientist at Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library in Evansville Indiana. She was recent fellow for the 2018 Summer Fellowship of Data Science for Social Good through the University of Chicago. She was selected as 2018 Innovators for the Library Journal’s Mover & Shakers.
She has had the opportunity to present her work at numerous institutions across the United States including the University of Notre Dame and Massachusetts Institute Technology at the MIT Media Lab with the organization Data for Black Lives. She obtained her Master of Science in Human Computer Interaction from DePaul University and Master of Library of Information Science from Dominican University. Her six year background is a cross disciplinary approach of HCI, qualitative and quantitative techniques utilized for helping to understand social issues such as education, literacy, health, and race through a lens of data science.
