Assistant Professor, INFO@UMD
Associate Director, HCIL@UMD
Assistant Director, PhD Program in Information Studies@UMD
2118E HBK South | joelchan@umd.edu | CV

Hi, I'm Joel. My research and teaching explore systems that support creative knowledge work, in domains such as design and scientific discovery.

Being in an iSchool, I conceive of "systems" very broadly, from individual cognitive skills, interfaces, tools and practices, to collaborative and organizational dynamics and tools, all the way to sociotechnical infrastructures within which knowledge work is done. Sometimes I study such systems; and sometimes I create new instances of such systems; often I do a close mix of the two. This talk is a decent overview of how this plays out through a central current thread of my research.

My long-term research vision is of a world filled with creativity support systems that are open and sustainable

Previously, I was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Project Scientist in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) at Carnegie Mellon University, where I worked with Steven Dow and Niki Kittur. I received my PhD in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, where I was advised by Christian Schunn.

Recent news and updates

Jun 2021 John Morabito presents his Master’s thesis work on context and scholarly synthesis as a paper at Creativity and Cognition 2021!
May 2021 Received $50k in seed funding from Protocol Labs for our work on sustainable infrastructures for knowledge synthesis!
Feb 2019 We published a perspective piece on our computational analogy work in PNAS, and got some press coverage of it too!
Nov 2018 I joined the Program Committee and agreed to co-chair Demos at CSCW 2019.
Nov 2018 I received a Research Improvement Grant (RIG) from the iSchool to explore infrastructures for collective design involving government, citizens, nonprofits, foundations, and entrepreneurs in Baltimore.

See all news and updates

Talks and travel

2023, Oct 16-18 🎤 Talk @MetaGov Seminar
2023, Oct 16-18 🎤 ✈️ CSCW 2023 @Minneapolis, Minnesota
2023, Aug 24 🎤 Talk @International Society for the Study of Creativity and Innovation Symposium on Materiality in the Creative Process
2023, Aug 17-18 ✈️ ARO Workshop on Decentralized Science @Columbia University, NYC
2023, Jul 11 🎤 Talk and visit @Semantic Scholar
2023, Jun 19-21 🎤 ✈️ C&C 2023
2023, May 30-Jun 1 ✈️ Speculative Technologies Workshop on Science and Technology Roadmapping @San Francisco, CA
2023, May 9-10 ✈️ MetaScience 2023 @Washington, DC