Dr. Jenna Matthews is a Principal Data Architect at Columbia Southern University where she is also a professor in the College of Education. Her work sits at the intersection of complexity science, collective intelligence, and learning analytics, with a research focus on distributed epistemic games—how knowledge, roles, and solution pathways emerge in collaborative, decentralized environments.

In parallel with her research, Jenna is a recognized leader in data standards and governance in higher education. She has held multiple leadership roles within 1EdTech, including Chair of the Caliper Product Steering Committee, and contributes to IEEE ICICLE’s Total Learning Architecture initiatives.

She brings this combined perspective on complexity and infrastructure to her role as Chair of the Governance Subcommittee for the Interdisciplinary Complexity Research Association for the Social Sciences (ICRASS), where she supports the development of sustainable, inclusive organizational structures for interdisciplinary collaboration.

Dr. Jonan Phillip Donaldson is an Assistant Professor and Program Director of Learning Design & Learning Sciences in the School of Education and Human Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he developed and leads the first learning sciences master's program in the Gulf States region. He earned his Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and Learning Technology from Drexel University. His research program applies complex systems theory to the study of learning, teaching, and social systems change through three interconnected lines of inquiry. His development of complex conceptual systems theory offers a framework for understanding how assumptions and conceptualizations shape educational practices and outcomes. His learning experience network analysis (LENA) methodology provides rigorous tools for analyzing complex systems of learner experiences in design-based research. And his work on creativity and design thinking investigates how learning environments can be analyzed as complex systems and redesigned to support agency, critical thinking, and transformation. Grounded in constructionist theory, situated learning theory, and cultural-historical activity theory, this work bridges the learning sciences and complex systems science to address fundamental questions about how people learn and how complex systems change. His scholarship includes peer-reviewed publications in high-impact journals, refereed proceedings, and ongoing pursuit of major external funding. He collaborates with an international network of scholars, and his growing research group at UAB, the Collaborative Multidimensional Perspectives for Learning Experience Investigation and Design Innovation (COMPLEXIDI) research lab, trains emerging learning scientists in theory-driven, design-based approaches to research grounded in complexity science.