National Advisory Board

Nichole Pinkard, Ph.D.

Dr. Pinkard is a Senior Research Associate, as well as the Chief Technology Officer and Director of the Information Infrastructure System (IIS) project at the Center for Urban School Improvement (USI) at the University of Chicago. She plays a leading role in USI's engagement in the ongoing process of researching problems around the integration of advanced technology systems into urban schools.

As lead designer of the center's IIS project, Nichole heads the design and development of a knowledge management system that will better equip urban schools to provide ambitious intellectual work for all students. She also created the vision for the Digital Media Program for students at the University of Chicago Charter School. She is a recipient of the Jan Hawkins Award for Early Career Contributions to Humanistic Research and Scholarship in Learning Technologies and an NSF Early CAREER Fellowship. Her current scholarly interests include culturally responsive computer-based learning environments, cultural contexts affecting learning broadly and literacy specifically, visualization tools to support analysis of data, gender, and technology, and ubiquitous scaffolds.

Nichole holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University, an M.S. in Computer Science from Northwestern University and a Ph.D. in Learning Sciences from Northwestern University, where she developed software to leverage background knowledge to teach beginning reading.