Irene Lopatovska

I am a Professor at the Pratt Institute School of Information. I worked as an information professional in government and corporate organizations, and earned my Ph.D. in Information Science (with minor in Decision Making) at Rutgers School of Communication and Information. My interests evolve around humanistic research and understanding of relationships between humans, information and technology. My research aims to represent the end-users’ voice in technology design recommendations. In recent years, I worked with teens affected by the traumatic experiences of Russia-Ukraine war and the COVID-19 pandemic. My recent studies examined user interactions with conversational agents, including Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, and Google Assistant, and the potential effects of this technology on user well-being. I was a co-PI on the NSF funded project “Data Literacy with, for, and by Youth: Exploring How Teens Co-Design After-School Programs as Sites of Critical Data Practice”, led by Dr. Leanne Bowler. (https://sites.google.com/pratt.edu/data-activism-for-youth/home ).  I use collaborative methods in my research and teaching, and authored more than 50 publications, often with students, in the areas of human-computer interaction (HCI) and conversational user interfaces (CUI).

B.S. Philology, Kyiv State University; M.L.S., University of North Texas; Ph.D. Information Science, Rutgers University.

Research