David Ribes

Human Centered Design and Engineering

David Ribes is an associate professor in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE) at the University of Washington. He is a sociologist of science and technology who focuses on the development and sustainability of research infrastructures (i.e., networked information technologies for the support of interdisciplinary science); their relation to long-term changes in the conduct of science; and, epistemic transformations in objects of research. His current investigations focus on the ‘ecology of AIDS research infrastructures,’ by studying the changing sociotechnical architectures that have supported HIV/AIDS science over the past 30 years. In the past he has focused on the development of ‘cyberinfrastructures’ in geoscience, ecology, physics and biomedicine. His methods are ethnographic, archival-historical and comparative.

Before coming to UW he was Assistant Professor in the Communication, Culture and Technology (CCT) Program at Georgetown University. During 2014/15 he held a Faculty Fellowship at Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP), and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Michigan School of Information in 2006-8.