Brian Atkinson
Assistant Teaching Professor, Information Technology, The Polytechnic School
Dr. Brian Atkinson successfully manages a multi-faceted career that straddles several spheres of the higher education ecosystem. Throughout his professional life, he has balanced the unique ability to clearly articulate the complexities of data-centric and technological environments and tools, while developing leadership acumen, and establishing himself as a mentor, teacher, and scholar.
Dr. Atkinson began his technical career as a systems analyst managing an extensive data library within a research center at the University of Arizona (UA). He quickly rose through the ranks to become a director and assistant dean whose responsibilities included managing infrastructure, technology, and creative services at the largest college at the UA. His intense focus on the intersection of technology and leadership was demonstrated through promoting numerous campus level initiatives and providing strategic and operational oversight for collegiate, departmental, group, and individual technical accomplishments. While many of these successes were accomplished by members of the department that he founded, a noteworthy portion leveraged his strong commitment to dialog, collaboration, and cooperation and his understanding of social, technical, administrative, and organizational networks that are necessary to achieve cross-campus support.
Dr. Atkinson’s multidisciplinary research in natural language processing (NLP) leverages information retrieval (IR) and learning theory, data architecture and modeling, and multi-modal analysis techniques to examine the roles and characteristics of higher education information executives. These are the very types of executives that he had worked with on numerous projects and initiatives during his 20+ years at the University of Arizona.
Prior to returning to Arizona, Dr. Atkinson was a visiting professor at the University of Illinois Chicago where he used his broad background in technology to design and implement environments supporting a series of multi-disciplinary tools. These labs encouraged faculty to introduce and integrate technology ranging with projects in the Fine Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences into their projects. This often resulted in them re-envisioning their work in innovative and expansive ways that took advantage of the technologies provided to them. A range of tools and technologies including CNC, SLA and FDM 3D printing, 3D scanning, large-scale data analysis and visualization, immersive software development, geographic information systems, and a myriad of other resources, were introduced through public talks, consultations and workshops.
In addition to having earned a doctorate studying large-scale text analysis and processing, Dr. Atkinson also earned an American Library Association-accredited master’s degree in Information Resources & Library Sciences and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Both degrees remain integral to his teaching and research. Visual cognition, learning theory, and information retrieval consistently provide vital foundations and connections to support identification and communication of the patterns found in extraordinarily large data sets and multi-faceted theoretical data constructs.
Dr. Atkinson is a Navy veteran who was recalled to active duty during the First Gulf War and served as part of a the USS Pyro (AE-24)'s navigation team. Dr. Atkinson love of ocean adventures has resulted in his earning his boat captain qualifications during his frequent summer sailing trips in the British and United States Virgin Islands.