Research

Faculty Research Profiles

Brandiff R. Caron's research examines the relationship between theories of democracy and technical expertise. Specifically, he argues that theories of deliberative democracy, as opposed to other theories of democracy, provide the best ways of understanding how technical expertise can be accounted for in democracy theory. His research focuses on the communicative elements of deliberative democracy and the necessity for communication across varying levels of expertise, disciplines, socioeconomic class, race, gender, etc.

Deborah Dysart-Gale’s research brings together her interests in intercultural communication, health communication and community development. She works primarily to improve health and social work communication in developing communities. Her recent interest is in applying health communication scholarship to ICT projects for social development.

Govind Gopakumar’s major research interest is related to infrastructures of cities such as technological networks of information, water supply, sewers, roads, bridges, and energy. He is particularly interested in investigating the dynamics of the interaction of global and urban/regional factors on processes of change in urban infrastructures in developing countries. His doctoral degree is in Science and Technology Studies from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Matthew Harsh is interested in how new and emerging technologies can improve livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa. An engineer and social scientist, he uses tools from sociology, public policy and economics to understand the forces that drive innovation and technological development, and that determine who benefits from technologies. He works mainly in Kenya and South Africa and has focused on new biotechnologies for agriculture (genetically-modified crops), nanotechnology, and computer science and information technologies.

Ketra Schmitt is interested in science, technology and public policy issues that have important risk-benefit tradeoffs. She develops methods and builds systems models to characterize and analyze risks and benefits as well as the associated uncertainty. Examples of her research include characterizing the economic impacts associated with terrorism and natural disasters and combining information from disparate health studies for environmental contaminants.