Dr. Julie Albright, USC

Working across the disciplines of Sociology, Psychology, and Engineering – Dr. Julie Albright’s unique approach has made her a sought-after keynote speaker on innovation and the social and psychological impacts of technology by companies like IBM, SAP, Oncor, Oracle and major energy conferences including Distributech, CS Week, DARPA, Data Center Dynamics and many others. She is a noted thought leader and media expert on the transformation of society and business by digital technologies, and the changing workforce. Dr. Albright has appeared on multiple national media interviews for the Today Show, CNN, NBC Nightly News, CBS, Dr. Phil, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Time, Newsweek and many others.

Dr. Albright has been a lecturer and research scientist at USC since 2002 in Sociology, Psychology and the Viterbi School of Engineering. She now teaches courses on the psychology of interactive media for the USC Dept. of Applied Psychology and Sustainable Infrastructure in the Viterbi School of Engineering.

While at USC, she put her unique skills to work on the problem of energy and the newly emerging smart grid, which combines the energy infrastructure, information technology, and consumer behavior. She co-wrote and won a $121 million Smart Grid Demonstration Grant from the Dept of Energy, in collaboration with the L.A. Dept of Water and Power, the USC Information Sciences Institute (ISI), the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) and UCLA. As the lead of the Behavioral piece, Dr. Albright assembled a cutting-edge team of professionals from Communications, Computer Science, Psychology, Sociology, and Gaming. She took a cutting edge approach to energy conservation and demand response by employing a combination of approaches including social listening through data mining, gaming and social influence strategies to change consumer energy behavior and encourage the adoption of smart meters. Her project was the only one in the country which included a behavioral component.

Dr. Albright has served as a peer reviewer for the National Science Foundation, the Economic the Social Research Council, UK, as well as a number of professional publications, including the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Journal of Communication, Gender and Society and International Sociology. She is also an advisor to ICOs and blockchain startups, and was named among the 24 Most Influential Women in Blockchain.

Dr. Albright has won a number of awards for her teaching and service during her tenure at USC, and is the author of multiple book chapters and multiple peer-reviewed journal articles, most recently in Norton “Quickies” and in the Handbook of Virtuality published by Oxford University Press. She was awarded the Hugo G. Beigel Award for Outstanding Research Paper of the Year in 2010 for her Internet research.

Dr. Albright is currently working on a new book on the impacts of social – mobile – digital technologies on society: Left to Their Own Devices: How Digital Natives Are Reshaping the American Dream, to be published by Prometheus Books Feb 2019. On pre sale now wherever books are sold.

She is also a contributing author for Huawei’s trade publication “ICT Insights,” published in English and Chinese and distributed in 120 countries, and to d10e’s new magazine on disaggregated business, and was recently voted onto the Board of Infrastructure Masons, one of the premier trade organizations for the datacenter and IT industries.