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Lab Members

Dr. Lu Tang is a Professor at the Department of Communication and Journalism, Texas A&M University. She received her doctorate in communication from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. She taught at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and the University of Alabama before joining TAMU in 2017.

Her research shows how people understand and communicate about health and illness and how such understanding and communication are enabled and constrained by social, political, cultural, and technological factors. Currently, her research focuses on the spread of health misinformation on social media, especially misinformation related to vaccines. Her work has been covered in major news outlets including CNBC, Time, Bloomberg Law, and Houston Chronicle.

Dr. Lu Tang

Director
Professor

Dr. Jinsil Hwaryoung Seo is an interactive artist and researcher who investigates aesthetics of experiences in the context of interactive art, education, and healthcare. Her research and creative practice focus on augmenting human experience with interactive and immersive technology. The primary aim of her research is to engage diverse audiences who could get benefits from embodied and immersive interaction through research and creative activities. She has developed tangible interfaces and mixed reality learning applications for STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) education: currently focusing on Anatomy education and Nursing Education.

Seo’s research has been supported by research grants through the National Science Foundation and National Endowment for the Art. Her research has been published in various journals and conference proceedings related to tangible/embodied interaction, interactive arts/design, participatory art, and learning technology. She will be responsible for developing interactive and immersive applications to support student learning.

Dr. Jinsil Hwaryoung Seo

Associate Professor

Jinxu Li is a doctoral student in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Texas A&M University. Her research interests lie at the intersection of health communication, media effects, and mixed methods. She desires to examine how individuals’ identities and media exposure influence their health-related knowledge, beliefs, and behaviors. Her current research includes identifying mental health stigma and reducing AI medical bias in underprivileged populations.

Jinxu Li

Graduate Student

My research interests are in natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning, focusing on information extraction and discourse analysis. I have worked on detecting and mitigating the effects of unwanted language and information, such as media bias, online abusive language or deceptive information, in addition to mining and analyzing subjective information from texts such as opinions, sentiments and emotions, as well as educational, clinical, societally beneficial and social science applications of NLP.

I received my Ph.D. in School of Computing, University of Utah in July 2014 and completed a postdoc in the NLP group, Stanford University afterwards.
I am a recipient of a NSF CAREER award.

Dr. Ruihong Huang

Associate Director
Associate Professor

Dr. Yunkang Yang is Assistant Professor of Communication at the Department of Communication and Journalism, Texas A&M University. He received his doctorate in communication from the Department of Communication at the University of Washington. Before joining TAMU in 2022, he was a post-doctoral research scientist at the Institute for Data, Democracy & Politics at the George Washington University.

Dr. Yang’s current research interests include propaganda, US right-wing media, and social media. His projects include detecting coordinated sharing on Facebook, identifying image-based misinformation on social media, and examining how online commenters interact with media and political elites to co-produce propaganda. His book project shows how US right-wing media outlets such as Breitbart can function as political organizations that pursue anti-democratic goals such as overturning the 2020 election results.

In 2022, Dr. Yang provided his research on US right-wing media to the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6th Attack as statements of record. A frequent media commentator, he has been interviewed by various media outlets including the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker, The Hill, NPR, and AFP.

Dr. Yunkang Yang

Assistant Professor

Sherecce Fields, PhD is an Associate Professor and the Associate Head of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Texas A&M University. Dr. Fields’ primary degree is in Clinical Psychology from the University of South Florida with areas of specialization in Child Clinical and Pediatric Psychology and holds Bachelor’s degrees in Chemistry and Psychology from Duke University. She joined the faculty at Texas A&M University in 2010. Her teaching focuses on the critical evaluation of the science of psychology and health behavior. Her research is focused on developing a bio-behavioral understanding of health-risk behaviors in adolescents and emerging adults, with the goal of developing effective interventions, specifically for use in disadvantaged populations. Dr. Fields’ research incorporates behavioral and clinical intervention methods and most recently has focused on the development of interventions that can be used with digital health technologies, including video games and other computer-mediated communication technologies for health risk behaviors including substance use, obesity, and diabetes. Dr. Fields has over 50 publications, proceedings, and abstracts. She has been the PI or Co-PI for over two million dollars in funded research from NIH, NSF and other agencies. Dr. Fields was the 2016-2018 recipient of the Ray A. Rothrock ’77 Fellow award from the College of Liberal Arts and is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.

Dr. Sherecce Fields

Associate Professor

Dr. Brittany Garcia-Pi recently completed her PhD in the School of Architecture at Texas A&M University, with a primary focus on Human-Computer Interaction. Her dissertation research centers on enhancing user experiences in collaborative Virtual Reality (VR) environments. Brittany’s research interests include but are not limited to introducing older adults to interactive technologies and observing intergenerational development between them and undergraduate students and developing applications that use Conversational AI to see how users react to different scenarios. Within the Data Justice Lab her responsibilities include overseeing research projects related to AI Ethics. With her extensive background in research methods and user experience design, Brittany brings a wealth of expertise to her role within the Data Justice Lab at TAMIDS.

Dr. Brittany Garcia-Pi

Post Doctoral Researcher

Lab Founder & External Advisor

Dr. Srividya Ramasubramanian

Professor

Newhouse Endowed Chair

S.I. Newhouse School of Public Comm

Syracuse University

Steering Committee

Dilma da Silva: Professor of Computer Science & Engineering, Ford Motor Company Design Professor II, Interim Director of the Texas A&M Cybersecurity Center
Tracy Hammond: Professor of Computer Science & Engineering, Director of the Institute for Engineering Education and Innovation
Laura Mandell: Professor of English, Presidential Impact Fellow, and Director of the Center for Digital Humanities Research
Troy Harden: Professor of Sociology and Director of the Race & Ethnic Studies Institute
Amir Behzadan: Clark Construction Endowed Professor, Associate Professor of Construction Science
Rebecca Hankins: Wendler Endowed Professor, University Libraries and Interdisciplinary Critical Studies

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