atchen@uw.edu
I am an Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics at University of Washington (UW) School of Medicine, where I lead the Language, Behavior, and Context lab. I am also an affiliate of the eScience Institute and the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, and hold adjunct faculty appointments in the UW Information School and UW Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, where I am co-director of the Svoboda Diaries Project, a lab that engages 15-20 students per year in research and/or historical preservation activities.
I received a BA in Psychology from Harvard University and MSIS and PhD degrees in Information Science from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. My work sits at the conceptual intersection of modeling/studying psychosocial and communicative processes in different life contexts to develop strategies for improving everyday life.
Here are conceptual and methodological foci of my work:
Conceptual interests:
Methodological interests:
Other:
I am currently Immediate Past Chair of the Special Interest Group, Information Needs, Seeking and Use (SIG USE). Please check out our website if you are interested in learning more and getting involved.
I am co-editing a JAMIA focus issue on Interactive Visualization of Health Data for Digital and Personal Health. Please reach out if you have questions!
Broadly speaking, I am interested in how to represent and interpret psychosocial and communicative processes as they occur in society and in the world, for the purposes of wellbeing.
My interests manifest in various conceptual areas including:
Current projects include:
Sample publications:
I was awarded the Excellence in Teaching Award in Biomedical and Health Informatics in the Department of Biomedical Informatics and Medical Education (2022-2023)
Recent presentations:
I teach courses on topics relating to consumer health informatics, user-centered and stakeholder-engaged design, and research methods. Though the courses I teach span a variety of modalities (in-person and virtual, synchronous and asynchronous), they include common threads:
Courses currently taught at the University of Washington: