Google Scholar
Education
Carnegie Mellon University / Human-Computer Interaction, Ph.D. and M.S.
Oregon Health and Science University / Computer Science, M.S.
North Carolina State University / Computer Engineering, B.S.
About
Tawanna Dillahunt is an interdisciplinary human-computer interaction researcher whose work examines how computing and AI can expand opportunity for communities that have historically been underserved by technology. Before joining Vanderbilt University’s College of Connected Computing as Professor and Associate Dean for Special Initiatives, she was Professor at the University of Michigan School of Information, where she founded the Social Innovations Group (SIG), an interdisciplinary research collective dedicated to designing, building, and studying sociotechnical systems that strengthen community capacity and improve access to employment, entrepreneurship, digital literacy, and economic mobility.
Prior to her academic career, Dillahunt worked as a software engineer at Intel Corporation, an experience that continues to shape her approach to building technologies that address real-world challenges. Her research combines human-centered design, community-engaged partnerships, and empirical methods to develop and evaluate computing systems that create meaningful social impact.
Dillahunt’s work has been recognized through fellowships at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute and MIT, ACM Distinguished Membership, and an inaugural Skip Ellis Early Career Award. She holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University, an M.S. in Computer Science from Oregon Health & Science University, and a B.S. in Computer Engineering from North Carolina State University.
At Vanderbilt, she looks forward to advancing interdisciplinary collaborations that connect computing research, education, and community partnerships to address complex societal challenges.
Research Focus
Human-Centered AI
Community-Centered Sociotechnical Systems
Publication Highlight
Jared Lee Katzman, Ben Green, and Tawanna R Dillahunt. 2026. Designing for Proactive Accountability: Lessons on Governing Technology from Detroit’s Food Sovereignty Movement. In Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’26). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 1305, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1145/3772318.3790695
Julie Hui, Mila Ekaterina Filipof, Soyoung Lee, Shanley Corvite, Mustafa Naseem, and Tawanna R Dillahunt. 2026. ‘I Know I Can Do the Job, It’s Just Putting It Down’: Using Personas as a Mirror to Identify Strengths. In Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’26). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 56, 1–44. https://doi.org/10.1145/3772318.3790914
Tawanna R. Dillahunt and Tiffany C. Veinot. 2018. Getting There: Barriers and Facilitators to Transportation Access in Underserved Communities. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 25, 5, Article 29 (October 2018), 39 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3233985