Moira Burke
Moira Burke

Email: (my full name) @gmail.com

about me

I'm a computational social scientist on the Social Impact team at Meta. I do a combination of large scale data science, international surveys, and qualitative work to understand how technology affects social support, happiness, loneliness, and social capital. This work has influenced the design of Facebook's News Feed, suicide prevention tools and privacy settings. I have a Ph.D. from the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

The "i" in my name is silent. I like Brussels sprouts.

research expertise

  • Social media and well-being: social support, loneliness, suicide prevention
  • Social comparison, body image
  • Job-seeking and social capital
  • Online privacy and context collapse

education

Ph.D. in Human-Computer Interaction, December 2011
Carnegie Mellon University

B.A. summa cum laude in Computer and Information Science, June 2001
Donald Clark Honors College, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR

selected press coverage

honors and awards

  • Best Paper Awards (CHI 2014, CSCW 2013, CHI 2010, CSCW 2010, C&T 2007, Small Group Research 2010)
  • Best Paper Honorable Mentions (CHI 2020, 2013)
  • Program Committees and Chairs: CSCW 2013-2016, CHI 2016-2017, ICWSM 2016
  • Google PhD Fellowship in Human-Computer Interaction (2010)
  • Yahoo! Key Scientific Challenges Program (2010)
  • Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship (2010)
  • Facebook Ph.D. Fellowship Finalist (2010)
  • National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (2005)
  • AT&T Labs Graduate Research Fellowship (2005)

peer-reviewed publications

teaching experience

  • Data Analysis in R (free online course on Udacity)
  • Computer-Supported Cooperative Work: Designing Online Communities (Teaching Assistant)
  • Human-Computer Interaction Methods (Teaching Assistant)

research experience

CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY (2005 to 2012)
Graduate Research Assistant
Advisor: Robert Kraut
Modeled successful interactions in online communities (Wikipedia, discussion groups).

FACEBOOK (Summer 2008 and 2009)
Research Intern
Advisor: Cameron Marlow
Modeled newcomer socialization strategies associated with future content contribution to Facebook. Modeled communication patterns associated with perceived social capital and loneliness.

AT&T RESEARCH (Summer 2005)
Research Intern
Advisor: Brian Amento
Evaluated multimodal interfaces for error correction of automatically generated voicemail transcripts.

UNIVERSITY OF OREGON (2000 to 2005)
Research Intern
Advisor: Anthony Hornof, with Erik Nilsen
Investigated human attentional capacity for animation concurrent with visual search tasks.

GRAPHICS, VISUALIZATION, USABILITY CENTER: GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (Summer 2000)
Research Intern
Advisor: Jessica Hodgins
Analyzed play-balancing techniques in massively multi-player games.

COMPUTER GRAPHICS LAB, BROWN UNIVERSITY (Summer 1999)
Research Intern
Advisor: Nancy Pollard
Developed tools to visualize aspects of motion, such as center-of-mass position and trajectory.

UNIVERSITY OF OREGON (Summer 1998)
Programmer
Advisor: Steve Fickas
Designed and implemented Java bots in an online "office hours" environment.

professional experience

RESEARCH SCIENTIST, FACEBOOK (2012 - Present)
Core Data Science Team

DIGITAL SERVICES COORDINATOR, PORTLAND COMMUNITY COLLEGE LIBRARY (2002 to 2005)
Designed and maintained award-winning library website and catalog based on usability testing
Maintained Solaris 8 servers running Apache, SSL, ColdFusion, PHP
Trained technical and non-technical staff in MARC cataloging, web publishing, accessibility standards
Led workshops at national library conferences

WEB AND MULTIMEDIA DESIGNER (1997 to 2002)
http://www.thoughtcrumbs.com/portfolio
Designed websites for non-profit organizations
Conducted usability testing, card sorting, heuristic evaluation
Composed creative standalone applications and Shockwave movies in Director
Programmed dynamic content with PHP, ColdFusion, MySQL