Bryan Semaan
University of Colorado Boulder, CO·Computer Science
Groups that serve vulnerable people, such as migrants fleeing war or veterans returning home, work under constant strain. Money is short, demand is high, and needs keep shifting.
- Fields
Computer Science
Social Science
- Topics
human-computer interaction
organizational resilience
refugees
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Dec 2028
What they work on
- Identify the strategies that refugee-serving organizations, including refugee-led ones, use to stay resilient in their technology and data use, through interviews and focus groups.
- Build models of how these organizations draw on data and information technology in everyday service work under limited resources and high demand.
- Run participatory design sessions with organizations and refugees to envision more technically robust futures and derive design and practice implications.
More about the research
These organizations rely more and more on computing technology and data to deliver services. Yet little is known about how they build that technical capacity under such limits, or how technology could help them stay resilient. This project studies that question in organizations serving refugee communities. The goal is design lessons that could also apply to other organizations facing similar constraints.
Why it matters
Refugee-serving and other human service organizations depend on technology but often lack money and staff to maintain it. Understanding how they keep their technology and data working under pressure could guide the design of tools that make such organizations more resilient. In turn, this could help them keep serving refugees, veterans and other vulnerable groups through crises and changing needs.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
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University of Washington, WA·Computer Science
Study how COASST citizen scientists use current identification materials, and probe their values, mental models and expectations for marine mammals, through observation, interviews and focus groups.
Yubo Kou
Pennsylvania State University, PA·Computer Science
Investigate how users, especially teenagers, experience online interactions and learn community norms, and what community-based education resources they can access, using interviews and surveys.
Anita Sarma
Oregon State University, OR·Computer Science
Identify the needs and expectations of students and instructors for a chatbot that supports open source software contribution, using participatory design.
The school
University of Colorado Boulder: 36 labs on PI Pages, $718M a year on research, 447 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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