Kyratso (Karrie) G. Karahalios is an American computer scientist and professor in the Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is noted for her work on the impact of computer science on people and society, analyses of social media, and algorithm auditing. She is co-founder of the Center for People and Infrastructures at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.[1]

Karrie Karahalios
Karrie Karahalios in Banff, 2006
Born
Kyratso G. Karahalsio
NationalityAmerican
Alma materMassachusetts Institute of Technology (PhD, SM, ME, and SB)
Known foralgorithmic auditing
social media
human-computer interaction
diagnostic tools for autism spectrum disorder
AwardsSloan Research Fellowship (2010)
Scientific career
FieldsComputer Science
InstitutionsUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
ThesisSocial catalysts: embracing communication in mediated spaces (2004)
Doctoral advisorJudith Donath
Doctoral studentsEric Gilbert
Websitesocial.cs.uiuc.edu/people/kkarahal.html

Education

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She received her bachelor's degree at MIT in EECS in 1994, ME in EECS in 1995, S.M. in Media Arts and Sciences in 1997, and a PhD in Media Arts and Sciences in 2004.[2]

Career and research

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Karahalios joined the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2004 as an assistant professor and received tenure in 2010. In 2017 she was promoted to full professor. Her research focuses on social media and the impact of computing on society, including algorithmic bias and methods to detect and analyze such bias, a field termed "algorithm auditing". Her 2014 paper on auditing algorithms provided research methods for detecting discrimination on internet platforms[3] has been cited more than 200 times.[4] Her most cited paper[5] provides a model for predicting "tie strength" in social media, and has been cited more than 1500 times according to Google Scholar.

ACLU suit

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In 2016, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a suit on behalf of Karahalios and several other plaintiffs[6] against Loretta Lynch, in her official capacity as Attorney General of the United States, challenging "the constitutionality of a provision of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”), 18 U.S.C. § 1030 et seq., a federal statute that prohibits and chills academics, researchers, and journalists from testing for discrimination on the internet". The federal government argued against the suit, but in April 2018, a federal judge ruled that it should be permitted to continue.[7]

Awards and honors

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Karahalios was one of the recipients of the National Science Foundation CAREER Awards in 2007, of the A. Richard Newton Breakthrough Research Award in 2008, and of the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowships in 2010.[8] She was named a University Scholar at the University of Illinois in 2019.[9] She has received Best Paper awards for publications in the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) in 2008, 2009, 2015, and 2017[10]

References

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  1. ^ "Center for People and Infrastructures". Retrieved 2019-10-20.
  2. ^ Karahalios, Kyratso G. (2004). Social catalysts: embracing communication in mediated spaces, PhD dissertation of Karrie Karahalios (Thesis). Massachusetts Institute of Technology. hdl:1721.1/28779.
  3. ^ Sandvig, Christian; Hamilton, Kevin; Karahalios, Karrie; Langbort, Cedric (2014). "Auditing algorithms: Research methods for detecting discrimination on internet platforms" (PDF). Data and Discrimination: Converting Critical Concerns into Productive Inquiry. 22. S2CID 15686114. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-02-18. Retrieved 2019-10-20.
  4. ^ "Karrie Karahalios publications indexed by Google Scholar". Retrieved 2019-10-20.
  5. ^ Gilbert, Eric; Karahalios, Karrie (2009-04-04). "Predicting tie strength with social media". Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Chi '09. Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 211–220. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.649.8931. doi:10.1145/1518701.1518736. ISBN 9781605582467. S2CID 6096102.
  6. ^ "Sandvig vs. Lynch, Case 1:16-cv-01368". Retrieved 2019-10-20.
  7. ^ "JUDGE ALLOWS ACLU CASE CHALLENGING LAW PREVENTING STUDIES ON 'BIG DATA' DISCRIMINATION TO PROCEED". American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). 2018-04-02.
  8. ^ "National and International Awards, CS Department at UIUC". Retrieved 2019-10-20.
  9. ^ "Five professors named University Scholars for Urbana-Champaign campus". 2019-09-12.
  10. ^ "Best Paper Awards in Computer Science (since 1996)". Retrieved 2019-10-20.