Dhiraj Murthy (Ph.D, University of Cambridge), Professor of Journalism and Media Studies(in the Moody College of Communication) and of Sociology, both at the University of Texas at Austin is founder and director of the CML. His research targets many of the same areas analyzed in this lab, including tobacco control on social media, misinformation/disinformation on social media, digital research methods, race/ethnicity, and computational social science. He wrote the book on Twitter. He has authored over 70 peer reviewed articles, papers and proceedings.
Jared T. Jensen (Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin) is a postdoctoral fellow with the Good Systems Ethical AI research collective and the CML at the University of Texas at Austin. His research examines the intersections of knowledge, generative AI, and power in organizational and creative work contexts, with particular emphasis on how workers navigate AI integration, automation, and the changing dynamics of creative labor. Dr. Jensen was awarded the 2025 W. Charles Redding Dissertation Award for significant contributions to the field of Organizational Communication. His research draws on in-depth qualitative methodologies and has examined a variety of sectors across the healthcare, technology, and creative industries. His work has been published in Communication Monographs, Management Communication Quarterly, Big Data & Society, and Annals of the International Communication Association.
Okirah Harris is a Ph.D. student in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin. She received her B.A. in Mass Communication and Public Relations from Meredith College, and her M.A. in Media and Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her goal is to engage in research that contributes to the discourse in arts journalism and to explore new trends, technologies, and methodologies in how arts journalism is adapting to a new digital age.
Kellen Sharp is a Doctoral Student in Communication at the University of Maryland and a Research Fellow with the Computational Media Lab. Their research engages projects on journalists’ use of AI, the marketing of e-cigarettes on social media, and the development of generative AI methods for content screening. In 2025, Kellen co-organized the mini-conference Encoding Realities, Decoding Power, Exploring New Formations of Gender, Race, and Sexuality within Artificial Identities with Dr. Dhiraj Murthy.
Emilia Edwards is a PhD student in Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on visual communication, with particular interest in how emerging technologies reshape visual credibility, authorship, and identity. She has a background in communications and photography, with experience in both academic and professional settings across Latin America and the U.S.
Ilo Aguiar Reginaldo Alexandre Ilo Alexandre is an Assistant Professor at Universidade Lusófona (Portugal) and a researcher at CICANT/Lusófona. He holds a Ph.D. in Digital Media, specializing in Journalism, from Universidade NOVA de Lisboa (UT Austin Program|Portugal). His primary research focuses on data journalism. Additionally, he is actively exploring digital methods that offer innovative approaches to studying media and communication phenomena.
Ritika Banepali is a Computer Science student at the University of Texas at Austin, pursuing a certificate in Digital Arts and Media. At the Computational Media Lab, she is interested in exploring how data visualizations can intersect with art and media to tell stories about technology’s role in society. She hopes to leverage data analytics in creative ways that highlight the experiences of marginalized communities and make complex social issues more visible and accessible.
Tejna Dasari is Computer Science student at UT Austin with an interest in Machine Learning/AI. More specifically she is interested in building products that use Computer Vision. She is passionate about understanding how we can use Artificially Intelligent systems and tools to further help everyday lifestyles. She has interned at Facebook and Microsoft as a Data Scientist and a Software Engineer and will be working at Apple as a SWE post-graduation.
Sonali Hornick is a recent graduate of UT Austin. She holds a M.S. in business analytics from UT’s McCombs School of Business and a B.S. in Informatics – Data Science from UT’s iSchool. During her graduate studies she was Brumley Graduate Fellow with the Strauss Center for International Security and Law, where she conducted research on how international collaboration among democratic allies can be leveraged to develop regulatory frameworks that ensure the responsible integration of AI technologies into existing platforms, safeguarding data sovereignty, privacy, and trust and safety standards. Her past research in CML related to environmental data science, and utilizing cloud computing to analyze Koo a social media platform. Currently she is working on a project analyzing Instagram data from London’s Brick Lane neighborhood.
Anthony Yang is a student at UT Austin studying Statistics and Data Science, Math, and Computer Science with an interest in data science, statistical modeling, and machine learning. He is currently working on a project that utilizes computer vision and machine learning to analyze Instagram data from Brick Lane, London.
Harini Chandrasekhar is an Informatics student at UT Austin, specializing in Human-Centered Data Science with a minor in Business. She is passionate about applying data science in healthcare settings and is currently exploring the role of data in understanding social media behavior. Her current research with the Computational Media Lab (CML) involves using multimodal large language models to analyze Instagram posts, integrating both images and captions, to uncover cultural themes related to Brick Lane.
Jackson Sorenson is an undergraduate Advertising student with minors in Applied Statistics and Computer Science. His research focuses on nicotine and cannabis usage, exploring how online social community structures influence and sustain these behaviors. Passionate about the intersection of data and ethics, Jackson is driven by the belief that data and advertising can be leveraged for positive social impact.
Emma MacKenzie is a recent graduate from Boston University, where she earned a B.A. in Psychology and a B.S. in Advertising. She is interested in the intersection of communication and human behavior, particularly how people understand and engage with media, and will be working on the Dab Study at CML. Prior to joining the lab, she interned at several communications agencies, where she supported campaigns and explored how messaging strategies shape public perception.
Anooj Desai is a current MSCS candidate at UT Austin with an interest in AI/NLP. Particularly, he has an interest in the intersection of software engineering, data engineering, and AI. He obtained his BA in Computer Science at UC Berkeley with a minor in Data Science. He has interned at and is currently working as a Software Engineer at Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI Inc.)
Dan Truong is a Mathematics student at UT Austin with an interest in AI/ML, blockchain technologies, and startups. He is a member of Texas Blockchain, where he is exploring web3 and crypto technologies. At the Computational Media Lab, he has worked on research projects examining digital discourse communities such as PassportBros and ABCDesis.
High School Interns:
Elan Suttiratana is a senior at the Hackley School in Tarrytown, NY. He has worked on CML projects in natural language processing and computer vision.
