Meet Jana Diesner, expert on interplay and co-evolution of information and networks

Jana Diesner, an assistant professor at the iSchool, or Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has joined the Information Trust Institute.

Diesner's research is at the nexus of socio-technical network analysis, natural language processing and machine learning. Diesner develops and studies computational methods and technologies that help people to better understand the interplay and co-evolution of information and networks. She uses these techniques to extract the structure of covert, or otherwise hard-to-access, networks from large collections of diverse text data sources and uses the resulting data to study the functioning and dynamics of these groups. Diesner works closely with subject matter experts on the verification of her data and on advancing our theories, models and deep understanding of covert networks.

As for being new to ITI, an institute that researches and develops trustworthy and secure information systems, Diesner said, I'm excited about the opportunity to interact with people who are interested in many different aspects of security, to learn more about ongoing work at UIUC in this domain and to discuss my research with them.

Diesner received her PhD from Carnegie Mellon University, School of Computer Science.