Welcome Assistant Professor Maria Y. Rodriguez
Published August 31, 2020
The UB School of Social Work is bringing big data to the study of social work with the addition of Maria Y. Rodriguez, PhD, as our new assistant professor.
Dr. Rodriguez joins UB from Hunter College/CUNY, where she founded the caretLAB, the first lab dedicated to computational research methods in the public interest housed in a school of social work. Her caretLAB work will continue under the auspices of the UB School of Social Work.
With the addition of Dr. Rodriguez and her caretLAB, UB School of Social Work adds important expertise to the school’s research enterprise, the Buffalo Center for Social Research. Dr. Rodriguez will continue her research into extracting insights from big data about how humans live their lives and find ways to turn those insights into interventions to support marginalized communities, as well as addressing other issues social workers are poised to tackle.
“The intersection between big data and social policy is the next great frontier for social workers,” said Nancy Smyth, Dean of UB’s School of Social Work. “We are excited to welcome such an accomplished professional to our community of scholars."
In her role at UB, Dr. Rodriguez will be teaching MSW students (policy and macro practice), continuing the lab’s current portfolio of research projects on algorithmic decision-making in human services and social media, as well as working to support the broadening of social work research to include computational research methods.
