Dr. Keri Stephens is an expert in using technology to communicate during infrastructure-related crises and disasters and in the workplace. She has authored over 100 articles/book chapters, and her two most recent books are the national-level-award winning book New Media in Times of Crisis (2019, Routledge), and the two-time national-level award-winning book Negotiating Control: Organizations and Mobile Communication (2018, Oxford University Press).

Her research has received federal (e.g., NSF), state, industry, and international agency (e.g., Japan Science & Technology Agency) support. Her team recently authored the Texas Water Development Board’s Flood Resource Guide for Community Officials in 2022, and they developed the Public Involvement Training for TxDOT in 2023. She is currently working on the Digital Risk Infrastructure Program (DRIP) for under-resourced Texas Communities.

She is a Professor in Organizational Communication Technology and is Co-Director of Technology, Information, & Policy Institute in the Moody College of Communication at The University of Texas at Austin. She has a BS in biochemistry from Texas A&M University, an MA and Ph.D. from The University of Texas at Austin, is a flood survivor (1978 Flood on the Clearfork of the Brazos River in Texas) and grew up in the rural Texas community of South Bend, TX.