Student Profiles

Email: chenc4@illinois.edu COHORT: 2018 RESEARCH INTERESTS    My research focuses on understanding the influence of unique characteristics of immersive environment on individuals’ information processing, cognitive performances and decision making. It turns into three inter-related questions: 1)… Read More

Email: jyao13@illinois.edu Jiachen (Lulu) Yao is a 2nd year Ph.D. student in the ICR program. Jiachen got her bachelor degree in Communication Studies at South China University of Technology. She got her master degree in advertising at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Jiachen is mainly… Read More

Email: kbwilso2@illinois.edu Kerry Wilson received her master's degree in communication with an emphasis in women's studies in 2011 and a bachelor's degree in communication and a bachelor's degree in African American studies in 2009 from Saint Louis University. Her research focuses on African… Read More

Email: zwang101@illinois.edu I am currently a first year PhD student at ICR. I graduated from Nankai University with dual degree of economics and English literature/translation and recently graduated from the University of Illinois with M.S. in advertising. I have expansive interests in psychology… Read More

Email: ranju3@illinois.edu Ran Ju holds a B.A. from Fudan University (China) in journalism and a Master in International Affairs at Columbia University. Ran Ju's encounters with political and economic studies in both US and China have led her to value collaborative frameworks for research and… Read More

Email: vfort@illinois.edu Vernita Pearl Fort entered ICRs Ph.D. program after completing a diplomatic career with the United States Agency for International Development, United States Department of State. She worked in 40 countries across Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and the… Read More

Email: astra2@illinois.edu RESEARCH INTERESTS I am interested in how the status of religion is used in national iconography and ritual, and how religion and religious messages are used to justify certain acts or attitudes of the individual and organizations. My work involves tracing the evolution… Read More

Email: das10@illinois.edu RESEARCH INTERESTS Interested in historical materialism, knowledge transfer in the field of advertising/marketing studies, advertising and consumer culture, media archaeology. My project looks at the development of the advertising institution/industry in India in the… Read More

Email: malo@illinois.edu RESEARCH INTERESTS I am interested in studying online communities in their (infra)structure, their formation, and their interaction with other media sources. My work exists at the intersection of science and technology studies, feminist/critical studies, and media studies… Read More

Email: sxiong9@illinois.edu RESEARCH INTERESTS My research interest falls in the area of information processing and attention in new media, with a focus on how information processing style and attention can work interact to influence perceptions of media message, and how can cognitive processing… Read More