David Hendry

Associate Professor & MSIM Program Chair, the Information School

David G. Hendry is an associate professor at the Information School, University of Washington, where he teaches courses in human-computer interaction, information system design, and foundations of information science. He investigates tools, practices, and systems that create the conditions for sustainable, inclusive participation in the design of information systems. Working with the theory and method of Value Sensitive Design, he is currently conducting studies on the use of information systems by homeless young people and drop-in centers that support their welfare. He is a member of the Value Sensitive Design Research Laboratory. David also serves as an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Human-Centered Design and Engineering. 

He has published on information management in design, design education, search, and end-user programming. In 1998, before joining the iSchool in 2002, he created the User Experience Group at Lycos — one of the first internet search engines — where he conducted user research on a variety of internet search and communication products. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland in 1996. For his dissertation, he developed a user-interface architecture for implementing diverse families of information retrieval applications. He received his BA in 1986 and a MSc in 1989 in Computing and Information Science from the University of Guelph.

Fawad Khan

Head of Product - Azure Lab Services, Microsoft

Fawad Khan has 10+ years of experience in enterprise Digital Transformation and Cloud Computing. He has worked at Microsoft for 15+ years, building and managing various Cloud services and technologies including Office 365, Azure, and Dynamics 365.

He is ranked as one of the top Cloud Computing influencers and thought leaders by Onalytica, Thinkers360 and TheAwardsMagazine.com. Author of Digital Transformation using Emerging Technologies: A CxO's Guide to Transform your Organization and numerous articles, Fawad is a frequent speaker at many industry conferences and a thought leader on social media.

Wes King

Assistant Teaching Professor, UW Information School

Dr. Wes Eli King teaches core informatics courses to undergraduates in the University of Washington Information School. They have been at the UW since 2013, starting as a graduate student and now as faculty. Dr. Wes brings over 20 years of technical writing and technical training experience to the classroom and offers a critical informatics lens for students to adopt as they develop their career goals and imagine the future of information. They are passionate about teaching and enjoy designing collaborative, peer-based learning environments.

As an activist-researcher, Dr. Wes locates their research at the intersection of technology, religion, and gender. They completed their dissertation entitled, A Match Made in Heaven: Queer Christians and Dating Apps, at the UW iSchool in 2021 and teach a Special Topics in Informatics course on internet dating and the future of relationships. Dr. Wes has also developed a Special Topics in Informatics course on AI, robots, and transcending religion that brings together their research and teaching with their interest in science fiction and imagining futures.

Sara Sanford

Assistant Teaching Professor, UW Information School

Assistant Teaching Professor Sara Sanford has focused her career on harnessing the knowledge in information to drive meaningful action. As an educator and mentor, she is committed to helping others discover the tools to do the same.

Sara’s interdisciplinary approach to furthering the iSchool’s mission focuses on matching vision with practicality. She is passionate about leveraging data to eradicate inequities in employee and customer experiences, public policy and product design. In the classroom and in her research, she expands on these areas to focus on the societal impacts of research design, the role of sustainability in product development lifecycles, and the intersection of bias, ethics, and scaled AI.

Mike Teodorescu

Assistant Professor, UW Information School

Mike Teodorescu's research and teaching interests encompass machine learning fairness, technology innovation and adoption, intellectual property, and entrepreneurship. Through collaborations with USAID, MIT, and Harvard, he has brought a rigorous, information systems approach to the ethics of AI and ML fairness - powerful tech increasingly affecting everything from hiring to lending to security across the globe. He has also partnered with U.S. Patent and Trademark Office leadership to study strategic use of patents by firms, with a focus on effects of patent policy on priorities like green technology and gender and socioeconomic equity in invention.

He serves on the Strategic Management Journal Editorial Review Board and is joining the Editorial Board for Journal of the Association for Information Systems for the Special Issue on Digital Responsibility starting November 2022. He is a longstanding INFORMS, AOM, and IEEE member. Prior to joining the UW, he was a faculty member at Boston College and a Visiting Scholar at MIT D-Lab, and cofounded the medtech social enterprise SurgiBox to improve access to quality healthcare globally. He has published widely in information systems, business, policy, technology, and global development journals as well as an HBS teaching materials; and is also the holder of several patents.

Teodorescu earned his doctorate from Harvard Business School and his Computer Science bachelor’s cum laude from Harvard University.

Emily Witko

Director of People and Diversity, Equity, and Belonging, Hugging Face

Emily is a people-obsessed engagement specialist with a master’s in Women's and Gender Studies. In their current role at Hugging Face, they source, recruit, hire, develop, and retain top AI talent, with a dedicated focus on team happiness and growth. Emily thrives in people-centric spaces that prioritize community and belonging, and loves forcing software engineers to think people-first.

Shane Xu

Senior Technical Program Manager, Google

Shane is a guest faculty member at the University of Washington Information School with over a decade of experience building products with large cross-functional teams.

After graduation, he consulted at PwC and led a major cloud security initiative for a top SaaS company. Later he explored product and program management at Amazon, and currently works as a Technical Program Manager at Google. His current focus is to build a strategic defense system, protecting thousands of Android devices and hundreds of millions of users against serious security and privacy threats.

Shane is a UW iSchool alum, MSIM 2014, and has been serving as a mentor for the iMentorship Program since 2019. He is passionate about working with underrepresented and international students, sharing knowledge and industry insights to empower them to excel in their careers.