Driven by Impact: Ken Anderson Views Academia as a Path to Service

Ken Anderson has an impressive research resume. After earning his Ph.D. in computer science from UC Irvine’s Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Science (ICS) in 1997, he joined the Department of Computer Science in the College of Engineering & Applied Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He has since conducted research in software engineering, hypermedia, computer-supported cooperative work and human-computer interaction, with more than $13 million in grants. His work for Project EPIC — Empowering the Public with Information in Crisis — resulted in a large-scale data-collection infrastructure for analyzing social media posts related to natural disasters, increasing our understanding of the field of crisis informatics. It’s no surprise Anderson is a 2025 ICS Hall of Fame inductee.

Yet his true passion lies in building supportive academic policies. At CU Boulder, as a faculty member, associate dean of education, and now chair of the Department of Computer Science, Anderson has championed efforts to broaden participation in computing.

What first sparked your interest in computer science?

In the early 1980s, I lived next door to someone who had an Atari 400. It was marketed as a gaming machine, but if you turned it on without a game cartridge, up popped a programming environment that my friend and I found way more interesting than the games — which, at the time, only featured a little white square to represent your player. We found magazines that instead showed us how to program the Atari 400, and although we didn’t understand what any of it meant, we typed code in to see what would happen. That started my lifelong learning of ways to get machines to do things for you.

What led you to UC Irvine for both your undergrad degree and Ph.D.?
When I graduated from high school, I knew I wanted to study computer science. My father was in the Air Force, and we were living in Riverside, so I applied to some of the UC schools and got into UC Irvine. While at UCI, my academic advisor — Essie Lev — had a huge impact on my life. I met with her at least twice a quarter, and I credit her with pointing me in the right direction on so many things, from scholarships to internships to the ICS honors program.

While in that program, I attended a presentation by Dick Taylor about combining user interface technologies with software engineering. I went to his office after and asked if there were any research opportunities I could pursue. He was open to picking up an undergrad in the spring but asked if I knew how to program in Ada. “Of course,” I said. I then signed up for an Ada programming course and taught myself the basics of Ada over winter break. Having that opportunity was a real motivator to quickly learn a language! That spring, I joined his research group and never looked back.

Dick Taylor also introduced you to your wife, Leysia Palen?

Yes! He called me into his office because there was a student who wanted to work on a project and needed help connecting to some of our software, and that turned out to be Leysia. Working on that project with her started our relationship and a few years later we got married. Then, after we graduated, we both were able to get tenure-track positions at CU Boulder.

It’s funny because at CU, Leysia and I always just focus on work, so there have been times when people we have been working with for two or three years are unaware that we are married. On the flip side, when we’re at home, we don’t talk about work; we stay focused on family life.

How did you first become interested in crisis informatics research?

I blame Leysia! The first topic she pursued after getting tenure at CU was related to information technology and disaster response; after reading up on the disaster response literature, she became aware that the true first responders are members of the public. It’s the people who first see that a building is on fire, for example. And with the rise of cell phones, everyone is not only a first responder but also a reporter.

So that led her to perform foundational work on crisis informatics, and she was really interested in the computational social science aspects. But she knew she would need to collect a lot of social media data — data that was only beginning to boom but then grew exponentially — and I had been doing software engineering and software architecture research. We were just on the cusp of the big data era, and this became our first opportunity to do research together.

I focused on programmatically collecting data from Twitter and other sources, looking at what to collect and how to structure the data. She then brought her computational social science approach to figure out what was going on in these millions of tweets. It was a great partnership that was greatly assisted by the work of our wonderful students and collaborators.

What do you like best about working in academia?

You have this ability to have a real impact. Depending on the classes you teach, 10 years into a career, you could have touched hundreds if not thousands of students. It’s rewarding. People shouldn’t think of going into academia just in terms of having a meaningful research trajectory. For me, academia has also been a path to service.

Someone from a low socioeconomic background who gains computer science skills can get an internship, go out in industry, and completely transform their lives, so I want to make sure as many people as possible have access to computing education. We do that by examining how policies might be excluding people or setting students up for failure, and then fixing those policies to be more inclusive.

Can you talk more about policy changes?

Prior to becoming associate dean, I had graduated 12 Ph.D. students, and I was and continue to be proud of all of them. But once I was in position to influence undergrad policy, I found that I could make a change to add more flexibility — and suddenly I had impacted 5,000 students! You start talking policy and people tend to nod off, but it’s the only way to scale beneficial impact on student success in a significant way.

I also led the creation of a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science degree which reached to heights of 1,900 students. The BA offers additional flexibility for students alongside our BS coursework.

Now, as department chair, I’m always asking what we can do to make computer science more welcoming and inclusive. Being involved in this work is also a personal journey, because I’m always learning new things and finding my own blind spots.

And while one doesn’t usually think of industry as a hotbed for diversity activities, what’s interesting is that Intel made a big splash years ago when they published studies they were conducting on how diversity correlates with innovation. Turns out it’s important to a company’s bottom line as well.

And what was your reaction to learning you were being inducted into the ICS Hall of Fame?

I was pleased and honored to learn the news. I’ve been humbled by it, and I’m excited to reconnect with ICS faculty and alumni. Leysia and I are looking forward to returning to UCI for the celebration!

— Shani Murray