Desmond Upton Patton has been named the College of Pennsylvania’s thirty first Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor, efficient July 1. The announcement was made immediately by Interim President Wendell Pritchett and Interim Provost Beth Winkelstein.
Patton, a pioneer within the interdisciplinary fusion of social work, communications, and knowledge science, would be the Brian and Randi Schwartz College Professor, with joint appointments within the School of Social Policy & Practice and the Annenberg School for Communication together with a secondary appointment within the division of Psychiatry within the Perelman School of Medicine.
“Desmond Patton’s modern work embodies the objectives of our Penn Integrates Information program, which seeks to share information and understanding throughout disciplines,” says Pritchett. “Dr. Patton’s analysis on the relationships amongst youth, gang violence, and social media and the expression of grief, identification, and well-being by way of on-line communication locations him on the forefront of his area. By his groundbreaking mixture of substantive social work information with the predictive and evaluative energy of machine studying, his work crosses disciplinary boundaries and advances our understanding of the function of know-how in society. We’re thrilled to have him be part of our distinguished school as a Penn Integrates Information Professor.”
Patton is at the moment professor of social work and sociology, in addition to senior affiliate dean for curriculum innovation and tutorial affairs, on the College of Social Work at Columbia College, the place he has taught since 2015, following three years on the College of Michigan. His analysis employs each qualitative and computational knowledge to higher perceive the relationships amongst younger individuals, gang violence, and social media, together with how violence and grief are expressed on social media, how social media facilitate youth and gang violence, and the way gang-involved youth conceptualize threats on social media. He has expanded this analysis by working with communities, youth, social staff, and laptop scientists to develop modern algorithms for analyzing social media posts, which have been extensively adopted by tech corporations and others.
He serves as affiliate director for variety, fairness, and inclusion on the Knowledge Science Institute of Columbia College and as founding director of SAFElab, a analysis initiative that brings collectively strategies from social work and computational knowledge science to higher perceive and intervene in violence involving youth of coloration. He’s the creator of “Going through Gakirah: Classes on Violence, Loss and Humanity from the Digital Streets of Chicago” (College of California Press, forthcoming), and his work has been cited throughout a variety of media, together with The New York Occasions, The Washington Put up, NPR, and Nature, along with quite a few articles in scholarly books and journals. He was named a 2019 Presidential Management Scholar, acquired the 2018 Deborah Ok. Padgett Early Profession Achievement Award from the Society for Social Work and Analysis, and has held fellowships on the Carr Middle for Human Rights Coverage and Berkman Klein Middle for Web and Society at Harvard College. He acquired a Ph.D. from the Crown Household College of Social Work, Coverage, and Observe on the College of Chicago; an M.S.W. from the College of Social Work on the College of Michigan; and a B.A. with honors in anthropology and political science from the College of North Carolina at Greensboro.
“Desmond Patton’s pathbreaking work,” says Winkelstein, “exemplifies our school’s robust dedication to discovering new options for the world’s most intractable challenges. His analysis exhibits how probably the most highly effective new approaches can emerge from bringing collectively the strategies of various disciplines. This work is altering the lives of younger individuals and their communities across the nation, as it is usually redefining approaches to social media, algorithm growth, and knowledge science.”
The Penn Integrates Information program was launched by former Penn President Amy Gutmann in 2005 as a College-wide initiative to recruit distinctive school members whose analysis and instructing exemplify the combination of data throughout disciplines and who’re appointed in a minimum of two colleges at Penn.
The Brian and Randi Schwartz College Professorship is a present of Brian Schwartz, a 1989 graduate of the Wharton School, and his spouse, Randi Schwartz. Brian Schwartz is vice chair of the Board of Advisors of the College of Social Coverage & Observe. He’s co-president of H.I.G. Capital, a world various funding agency.
