Category Archives: In the News

Uber removed blog post from data science team that examined link between prostitution and rides

November 28, 2014

I contributed to a great article at VentureBeat about Uber and its data management practices.

Earlier today, Gina Neff, an associate professor of communication at the University of Washington and the School of Public Policy at Central European University in Budapest, noticed something missing from Uber’s Data Blog. In a tweet, she wrote: The blog post in question was titled: “Location knowledge is a proxy for Uber demand.” Though based on the original URL, it was apparently first called something else: https://blog.uber.com/2011/09/13/uberdata-how-prostitution-and-alcohol-make-uber-better/.

Contributed to Economist on the Internship Economy

September 20, 2014

I contributed to the article “Generation i” in the Economist Magazine:

“For universities it’s really cheap money,” says Gina Neff, a professor of communication at the University of Washington. “They are getting tuition dollars and not having to spend instructional dollars.” Some internships are valuable, she says, citing one she oversees in which students work on local newspapers with support from teachers. But some are not: she vetoed a Hollywood PR-internship after it turned out to be little more than an unpaid job promoting films on campus. Some universities might have pocketed the fees and looked the other way.

Will Data from Wearable Devices Help Doctors Get in Tune with Patients?

April 28, 2014

Here is a nice write up at the Intel Wearable Tech Blog about my collaborations with their research team on health data. Intel Labs has supported my work on a project called “Organizational Adoption of and Adaptation to Patient Biosensor Data.”

Answering ‘how you’re doing’ may get the conversation started in the doctor’s office but what if your physician was well versed in your genetic makeup and had a diagnosis pretty in hand well before you arrived at the office? What’s keeping you from having a closer relationship with your doctor could be many things, or it might simply come down to good data. As more data becomes available through digitized health records and personal health monitoring or quantified self devices, it’s becoming clear that healthcare is one area of our lives that is grappling with benefits and challenges of new consumer technologies. In fact, you may hold more detailed health records on your mobile phone than what appears on a doctor’s chart, according to Gina Neff, an associate professor who runs the Project on Communication Technology and Organizational Practices at the University of Washington.

Continue reading on the Intel IQ Blog:

http://iq.intel.com/will-data-from-wearable-devices-help-doctors-get-in-tune-with-patients/