Biographical Sketch
Dr. Masucci received her Doctorate in Geography from Clark University in 1987. She also holds an M.A. in Geography ( Clark University 1986) and a B.S. in Geography and Regional Planning (Salisbury University 1982). She has been on tenure-track appointment at West Georgia University (1989-1991), at Auburn University (1991-1997) and at Temple University since 1997. She is currently the Director of the Information Technology and Society Research Group at Temple University and on appointment in the faculty of Geography and Urban Studies in the College of Liberal Arts. She is a Research Fellow of the Institute for Public Affairs and the Telemedicine Research Center at Temple Health Sciences Campus. She is also a member of the Advisory Board for the Disabilities Studies Program at Temple.
Her research the examines how barriers to accessing information resources using geographic information technologies are interrelated with community development and environmental quality problems, including accessing health, education, and social services. She has worked to develop university-community partnerships with organizations that address human rights issues, community and environmental planning organizations in the Southeastern U.S. and in Brazil involved in water quality monitoring and assessment, and with informal educational settings on integrating information technology curricula through educational programs aimed at advancing knowledge of to develop information resources.
She is currently the P.I. of an NSF sponsored project entitled Building Information Technology Skills among North Philadelphia Youth - bITS. The main objective of this project is to develop a community geographic information system involving participation of area high school students. This project is ongoing through 2007.
Dr. Masucci also investigates the ethical implications of e-health. She has also examined the relationship between geographic, social, and networked access to information technologies and health outcomes among 400 cardiovascular disease patients in a comparative study of health care systems in Philadelphia and rural Pennsylvania funded by the Pennsylvania Department of Health. She developed and implemented an internet training protocol that addressed digital divide barriers to accessing information technologies among patients enrolled in the study, assessing self-efficacy issues related to acquiring skills needed to use the internet communication tool developed for the study, and analyzing social, demographic, and spatial patterns associated with health outcomes among patients who use the communication tool.
Previous research has been funded by the USIA College and University Affiliations Program, USDA, Fulbright, and the Regional Center for Teacher Education in Georgia. This work has examined the relationships between community planning, environmental management and information uses and technologies in non-governmental organizations in the Atlantic Rainforest Region of Brazil, in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) River Basin region, and in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her work on identifying criteria for assessing appropriate use of IT in marginalized community settings is the focus of a new book that examines the relationship between social marginalization and technology implementation with non-governmental and community environmental planning organizations entitled: Towards a Theory of Contextual GIS (forthcoming - Oxford University Press).