Christoph Becker


Professor , Director, Digital Curation Institute

Christoph Becker

Professor , Director, Digital Curation Institute
  • Office: BL 645

Dr. Becker is Professor at the Faculty of Information of the University of Toronto. As Director of the Digital Curation Institute, he brings together graduate students, appointed fellows, faculty colleagues and partners to conduct research at the intersection of digital curation and systems design (http://dci.ischool.utoronto.ca), supported by state-of-the-art computing infrastructure and collaboration space funded by the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation and the Canada Foundation of Innovation.

He has published widely in software systems, digital libraries, and digital curation; created award-winning decision support tools for scalable digital preservation in collaboration with international consortia of universities, cultural heritage organizations and commercial partners; and developed open methods to evaluate digital preservation processes and capabilities.

Dr. Becker’s work unites a concern for digital, software-dependent information resources with a focus on the human and collaborative factors of decision making and systems design. It pays primary attention to the longer-term concerns that arise as software and information systems are embedded in the fabric of our societies.

His core contributions lie at the intersection of information and computer science. First, his research addresses the general disciplines of software engineering and information systems through a focus on requirements engineering; second, he publishes within the cluster of fields comprising digital curation, digital preservation, digital libraries and archives.

In his NSERC-funded research and as co-founder of www.sustainabilitydesign.org, he advocates a new interdisciplinary approach to software systems research that emphasizes long-term perspectives on socio-technical systems design and develops methods for designing sustainable software and information systems.

Professor Becker’s research is funded by the National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Ontario Ministry of Research, Innovation and Science, the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF), and the Connaught Fund.

 

Selected publications are listed below. For a full list, see Google Scholar.

 

  • Program

  • Research

  • Specialization

  • Selected Articles

  • Peer-reviewed papers in proceedings

  • Student Supervision