Ph.D. Student Spotlight

John-Patrick Akinyemi

John-Patrick Akinyemi is a Ph.D. candidate in management information systems at The University of Texas at Austin, advised by professor Sirkka Jarvenpaa. His research focuses on safeguarding information integrity through two streams: cognitive processes in visual misinformation and secure and equitable AI systems.

His work examines how authentic digital images can be misinterpreted on social media platforms and how organizational governance structures and algorithm design characteristics shape societal outcomes from organizations’ use of algorithms, such as bias, privacy risks, and cybersecurity risks. Using qualitative fieldwork, controlled experiments with neurosIS methods, and large-scale archival data analysis, his research reveals why platform corrections fail against misinformation claims anchored on authentic images and demonstrates how governance choices impact AI fairness.

His research is supported by a collaboration with Sandia National Laboratories, and some of his research has been accepted and is forthcoming in MIS Quarterly. Further, his work has earned recognition through a Brumley Next Generation Graduate Fellowship, selection for the Academy of Management CTO and the International Conference on Information Systems doctoral consortiums, and the Fred Moore Assistant Instructor Award for Teaching Excellence at McCombs.

You can learn more about him at https://jpakinyemi.com/.