Kerk F. Kee

Biography

Kerk F. Kee (Ph.D., 2010, The University of Texas at Austin) is a communication researcher and an interdisciplinary social scientist of innovations. His research primarily investigates the development, adoption, implementation, and the ultimate diffusion of big data technologies in scientific organizations. He also studies the dissemination of health information in cultural communities and the spread of pro-environmental attitudes in modern societies. His emerging research is moving towards studying innovations in entrepreneurial startups, natural disaster management, creative industries, and smart cities. His research has been funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, totaling over US$850,000 to date. He holds a prestigious 5-year NSF CAREER grant (2015-2020), awarded by the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure under NSF's Computer & Information Science & Engineering Directorate. According to Google Scholar Citations in September 2019, his research has been cited more than 4,400 times. When Kerk is not doing research, he enjoys practicing power yoga and learning about real estate.

Research

Kee's research includes diffusion of innovations (i.e., cyberinfrastructure/science gateways, social media, health interventions, water conservation behaviors) across organizational, scientific, health, environmental, entrepreneurial, and big data contexts.

New projects explore innovations such as PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis), blockchain/cryptocurrency, chatbots/conversation agents, collaborative robots/co-bots, artificial intelligent/networked intelligent systems, and natural disaster/crisis communication management systems.

Selected Publications

• Matei, S. A., & Kee, K. F. (2019). Computational communication research. WIREs: Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, 9, 4. https://doi.org/10.1002/widm.1304
  
  
• Liang, Y. J., & Kee, K. F. (2018). Developing and validating the A-B-C framework of information diffusion on social media. New Media & Society, 20, 272-292. DOI: 10.1177/1461444816661552
  
  
• Robertson, B. W., & Kee, K. F. (2017). Social media at work: The roles of job satisfaction, employment status, and Facebook use with co-workers. Computers in Human Behavior. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.12.080
  
  
• Kee, K. F., Sparks, L., Struppa, D. C., Mannucci, M., & Damiano, A. (2016). Information diffusion, Facebook clusters, and the simplicial model of social aggregation: A computational simulation of simplicial diffusers for community health interventions. Health Communication, 31, 385-399. DOI: 10.1080/10410236.2014.960061.

Teaching Focus

• Diffusion of Innovations, Organizational Communication, Research Methods.

Leadership & Awards

• 2020-2022 STEM Training in Ethics of Publication Practices (STEPP) (Award SES #1926348, US$ 345,702). The Cultivating Cultures of Ethical STEM (CCE STEM) Program, National Science Foundation. PI: Amy Koerber; Co-PIs: Karin Ardon-Dryer, Glenn Cummins, Lyombe Eko, Kerk Kee.
  
  
• 2015-2020 CAREER: Organizational Capacity and Capacity Building for Cyberinfrastructure Diffusion (Award ACI #1453864, US$519,753.00), National Science Foundation. Sole PI: Kerk Kee.
  
  
• 2013-2018 VOSS: Computational Tools, Virtual Organizing, and Dynamic Innovation Diffusion (Award OAC #1322305, US$324,981.00), National Science Foundation. Sole PI: Kerk Kee.