Jessica Vitak is an American information scientist who is an associate professor at the University of Maryland.

She serves as Director of the University of Maryland Human–Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL) and an Associate Member of the Social Data Science Center (SoDa).

[1] She earned a master's degree from Georgetown University in Communication, Culture, and Technology,[2] where Linda Garcia was the advisor for her thesis titled Facebook "Friends": How Online Identities Impact Offline Relationships.

She earned her doctorate from Michigan State University, joining the research team of Nicole Ellison and Cliff Lampe.

[7] She studies the underlying motivations for people's behaviors, how humans perceive risks when they approach new technologies, and how policy makers can do more to convey critical information.