Jessica Vitak

Jessica Vitak is an American information scientist who is a professor at the University of Maryland. She is faculty in the University of Maryland College of Information (iSchool) and Communication Department. She serves as Director of the University of Maryland Human–Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL) and an Associate Member of the Social Data Science Center (SoDa).

Early life and education Vitak studied journalism and communication at Elon University. After completing undergraduate studies, she moved to Washington, D.C. and worked for PR Newswire. where Dr. Linda Garcia was the advisor for her thesis titled Facebook "Friends": How Online Identities Impact Offline Relationships. While at Georgetown, she also worked as a research intern at the Pew Research Center. She earned her doctorate from Michigan State University, joining the research team of Nicole Ellison and Cliff Lampe. Her doctoral research investigated the relationship between Facebook use and maintenance strategies.

Research and career At UMD, Vitak was appointed as director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Communities and Information in 2016, and simultaneously became associate director of the Human Computer Interaction Lab. She became the director of HCIL in 2021. Vitak has continued to study how new technologies can benefit and harm humans. She studies the underlying motivations for people's behaviors, how humans perceive risks when they approach new technologies, and how policy makers can do more to convey critical information.

Awards and honors In 2025, Vitak was elected an ACM Distinguished Member.

Selected publications