About

I’m doing research and development to enable information discovery, which builds on work my areas of expertise:

  • The Semantic Web
  • Information Seeking and Web Use
  • Information Retrieval and Web Search
  • Collaborative Filtering (Recommender Systems)
  • Knowledge Management Systems
  • Knowledge Discovery in Databases (including Data Mining)
  • Human Computer Interaction (HCI)
  • Informetrics, Analytics and Behavioral Log Analysis
  • Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW)

The Bio

Don Turnbull is an assistant professor in the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin. Don’s teaching and research focuses on designing Web information architectures, information systems analysis, Information Retrieval, the Semantic Web and Knowledge Management Systems.

Early in his career, Don worked as a Methodologist at KnowledgeWare, Inc. designing CASE tools for client-server applications as well as doing usability, hypertext and multimedia development research. He also worked on a number of commercial software applications including Uninstaller for Windows. In the nascent days of the World Wide Web, Don was the Lead Technical Architect at IBM Interactive Multimedia, working on the World Book/IBM Multimedia Encyclopedia and other large-scale information architecture, system architecture and development projects.

Don also co-authored a book “Web Work: Information Seeking and Knowledge Work on the World Wide Web” published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2000. He received his doctorate from the University of Toronto focusing on Knowledge Discovery (Data Mining) for Informetric and Behavioral Models of Web Use. Don was the Director of Advanced Development at Outride, Inc., a Xerox PARC spin-off company that specialized in personalized information retrieval applications and was acquired by Google.

Don also continues to work with industry as a consultant specializing in search systems, information analytics as well as semantic and knowledge management technologies. He rarely talks about himself in the third person.