René Kizilcec, assistant professor of information science in the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science, has received the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award.

Kizilcec is the fifth faculty member from the Cornell Bowers CIS to receive an NSF CAREER Award this year, joining Sumanta Basu, Tapomayukh BhattacharjeeImmanuel Trummer, and Cheng Zhang.

A leading online-learning researcher, Kizilcec has examined nearly every facet of tech-assisted learning. His work ranges from the design and impact of technology in education and the architecture of online classrooms – at major universities and in low-resource countries – to algorithms for predicting student dropout rates, and inclusive marketing strategies used to advertise online courses. Broadly, his research focuses on the impact of digital technologies in educational contexts, particularly questions of equality in online learning and social-psychological barriers to success, and scalable interventions to improve educational outcomes and reduce achievement gaps.

He is director of Cornell’s Future of Learning Lab, which works to advance our understanding of technology’s impact in education and how it can be an engine of equality throughout society.

Kizilcec’s NSF CAREER Award will support his work to improve educators’ trust in and effective uses of predictive learning analytics to support students.

Louis DiPietro is a writer for the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science.