Dr. Celia Chen
About
I'm a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Maryland College of Information, working on cybersecurity professional development and AI integration through an IC Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. I recently completed my PhD in Information Studies at UMD, where I investigated how expertise is communicated, performed, and assessed across different digital environments.
My research focuses on understanding how digital platforms transform traditional mechanisms of expertise validation and how professionals maintain their domain knowledge when integrating AI tools. I'm generally interested in radicalization and extremism research, expertise signaling in online environments, and the intersection of human expertise with AI-driven systems.
Research
Current Project: Through my IC Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, I'm looking at how cybersecurity professionals maintain and develop their domain expertise while integrating AI-driven approaches. This work examines strategies for preserving critical skills like threat detection intuition and incident response capabilities, with the goal of developing design principles for AI systems that enhance rather than supplant human expertise.
PhD Research: My dissertation, "Stethoscopes to #SelfCare: The Transformation of Expertise Dynamics in Digital Environments," examined how expertise is communicated and validated across digital platforms through three case studies: physicians on Twitter/X, mental health content creators on TikTok, and graduate students assessing AI-generated content. The work demonstrates how digital platforms actively reshape expertise signaling and validation processes.
Ongoing Work: I serve as PI on a PROGRESS grant examining social media discourse around school safety technologies in the wake of school shootings. This mixed-methods study combines computational analysis of social media posts with community-based participatory research with Prince George's County Public Schools to understand how online narratives shape perceptions of safety technologies and how they align with on-the-ground realities. With my advisor Jennifer Golbeck, I also research radicalization and extremism, particularly focusing on incel communities and broader patterns of online violence.