Maria is completing her PhD at the University of Michigan School of Information. Her research interests include information behavior; health information seeking, provision, and use; information in the chronic illness experience; information, communication and learning; library practice, and community engagement. Maria's dissertation research, The Information Experiences of People with Chronic Illness as Shaped by Daily Life and Healthcare Contexts, is a multi-level analysis that looks at the roles and meanings of information in dealing with chronic illness from a patient-centered perspective and examines how the patient experience of information is shaped by the healthcare context. Her work was acknowledged at the 2010 Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) Conference and received an American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST) "Best Information Behavior Poster" award in 2008. Maria is also the recipient of a Phi Beta Mu Eugene Garfield Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship.
Maria brings with her diverse work experience in business, industry, nonprofit organizations, and educational settings. She spent spent 15 years in marketing research, account planning and strategic marketing communications, working with a variety of business and nonprofit organizations to help them better understand and communicate effectively with their key audiences. Maria has a Master's of Science in Information from the University of Michigan and a BA in English from Michigan State University.
