Dr. Jennifer Preece is Dean of the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland's iSchool. She has investigated usability and sociability design issues in online communities, including empathy, lurking and posting behaviors, cross-cultural interactions, motivation, and evaluation methods. She authored/coauthored three high-impact books: Human-Computer Interaction (1994), Online Communities: Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability (2000) and Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction (2002, 2007, 2011).

Jennifer completed her Ph.D. at the Open University, later becoming faculty there. She went on to be a Research Professor of Information Systems and Director of the Research Center for People and Systems Interaction at London South Bank University in London.