Benji Xie is a Ph.D. student at the iSchool.

When you meet someone who doesn’t know about your research, how do you describe it?

I build tools for equitable computing education.

Who is the faculty member working closest with you? What are you learning from them?

I work closest with Professor Amy J. Ko, my advisor. I'm learning how to be an effective researcher who both contributes knowledge to research communities (e.g. by publishing papers and presenting at conferences), but also ensures my work contributes to the communities around them (e.g. by working with Code.org on curriculum improvements). Working with Amy helps me be a better researcher, global citizen, and human-being.

Why are you interested in this subject?

I want to see a world where anybody who's interested in computing has the opportunities to not only learn it as a subject, but also to be included in computing communities!

What impact do you hope to make in the information field through your research/dissertation?

I plan for my work to inform the design of systems which can consider information from different sources (e.g. different stakeholders, from AI systems) and communicate it such a way that people have the information they need to address equity issues.

What surprised you the most when digging into your research?

What surprised me was the interplay between understanding by deliberation (e.g. reading prior research and discussing it with peers) and understanding by doing (e.g. prototyping a tool and seeing how stakeholders engage with it). Sometimes you advance your research by reading up on a theory or framework and then discussing with others how it can help explain a phenomena. But other times, it's about creating a prototype, and then understanding how stakeholders engage it. But the common theme is integration and iteration: the more you learn, the more you connect the pieces and revise what you thought you knew!

What are your career goals once you graduate?

There's still going to be a lot of work to do to ensure everybody who is interested in computing has the opportunity to learn and engage with it! So after I graduate, I want to continue building tools which help make learning experiences more equitable and help us understand how to design for equity. Research positions such as a postdoc, professorship, industry researcher, or non-profit researcher can help me continue this vision.

Visit Benji's website and follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.