Pamela Wisniewski is a second-year William T. Grant Scholar who has mentored over 20 Ph.D. students, 10 master’s students, and 50 undergraduate students on research projects in the last 4 years. Currently she is advising 7 Ph.D. students and more than 20 research assistants. Many of these mentees are women and belong to other underrepresented groups in STEM fields. As a mixed-race woman in the interdisciplinary field of Human Computer Interaction, Wisniewski has faced professional and personal challenges managing an ambitious, time-sensitive, and impactful research agenda, and she wants to use this grant as an opportunity to acquire stronger resources and skills to model for her students. She also seeks to achieve a work-life balance that prioritizes her health, family, and the societal impact of her research, while also learning to provide the scaffolding that students, particularly students of color, need to become strong, well-networked researchers. Wisniewski’s mentee, Karla Badillo-Urquiola, a third-year Latina doctoral student in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Central Florida, examines online safety from sexual predation among adolescents in the foster care system and seeks to co-design with youth effective socio-technical interventions that can protect them from sexual risks online.
Wisniewski will use this award to develop the skills necessary to provide the scaffolding that students, particularly students of color, need to become strong, well-networked researchers.
