August 7, 2008
UW to host CIA officer for research residency
The UW will participate for the first time in the Officer in Residence Program, in which a Central Intelligence Agency officer spends two years as a visiting researcher at a United States college or university. The Officers in Residence act as visiting faculty members who conduct research and teach classes subject to the department’s approval.
The UW will host officer in residence Timothy Thomas, who will be on leave from his position as a research scientist at the Open Source Center in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Thomas belongs to the Emerging Media Group, dedicated to analyzing public sources of information such as blogs, forums and Web sites. He will begin the appointment on Sept. 1.
Thomas’ current areas of research include machine learning, data mining and social networking. He received his doctorate in psychology from Tulane University. He is a former Peace Corps volunteer who spent 19 years teaching psychology at universities in New Orleans and New Mexico, and is a past president of the New Mexico Association of Higher Education Faculty.
Another area of interest for Thomas is computational linguistics. His professional distinctions include an award from R&D Magazine for one of the 100 most significant technological innovations in 1992, given for work mapping speech to vocal tract configuration. He was a national finalist for the Johns Hopkins National Search for Computing Applications to Assist Persons with Disabilities for “TalkingHead,” an animated display of the tongue’s movements during speech.
At the UW, Thomas will be housed in the Department of Technical Communication. He will be affiliated with the Pacific Rim Visualization and Analytics Center (PARVAC), the Institute for National Security Education and Research, and other groups.
The Officer in Residence program began in 1986 and is modeled on the State Department’s Ambassador in Residence program. Officers in Residence engage in non-classified research and are forbidden from recruiting during the period of their appointment.
“We’re very fortunate to host someone who brings both strong academic credentials and practical experience,” said Mark Haselkorn, professor of technical communication and director of PARVAC. “You can’t do research without access to practitioners. The two feed into each other.”
More than 100 officers have been hosted since the program’s inception by more than 50 institutions, including Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton universities. This year the other host institutions include Georgetown University, the University of Southern California, and the University of Pittsburgh.
For more information on the Officer in Residence program, see https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/academic-relations/officer-in-residence-program.html.
