Dr. Brian S. Butler is the dean of The University of Alabama College of Communication and Information Sciences.
Brian comes to UA from the University of Maryland where he served as professor and senior associate dean of the College of Information Studies where he led the hiring and development of the college’s senior staff; helped create the college’s first undergraduate program, which is now the fourth largest major on campus; and oversaw the design and construction of facilities expansion that doubled the space available to the college.
Brian is the founding co-director of the University of Maryland Social Data Science Center or SoDa. Created in 2019, the center provides education and research which enables effective, ethical and efficient use of social data throughout society. Butler facilitated faculty collaborations which resulted in $3 million in corporate funding for research in privacy, artificial intelligence and social data science.
Brian’s research interests include the development and modeling of online communities and social media systems, the interplay of power and information technology in organizations, and techniques for deploying complex information systems to support organizational performance, community resilience and individual well-being.
Brian earned a Bachelor of Science in mathematics and computer science, and a Master of Science and doctorate in information systems from Carnegie Mellon University.