Professor Deb Verhoeven is Canada 150 Research Chair in Gender and Cultural Informatics at the University of Alberta. Prior to this position she was Associate Dean of Engagement at UTS. In 2013 she was recognised as Australia’s most innovative academic for her efforts in creating crowdfunding opportunities for academic researchers. Deb is a former CEO of the Australian Film Institute and was inaugural Deputy Chair, National Film and Sound Archive (Aust.) and holds a current position on the board of CANARIE, Canada’s peak digital research infrastructure provider. She has served on the boards of the Victorian eResearch Strategic Initiative (VeRSI) and the Tasmanian government’s Digital Futures Advisory Council and Canada's NDRIO (now known as The Allinace).

Verhoeven is a leading proponent of the Digital Humanities. Her recent research has addressed the way innovative data techniques can be used to intervene and redress structures of domination (rather than just describe them). In her work as a digital humanities scholar, Professor Verhoeven is enlisting machine learning to redress the persistent domination of power elites. She is one of several lead researchers on the multi-national, multi-disciplinary collaboration: "GEP Analysis: Assessing, Understanding and Modelling the Impact of Gender Equity Policies (GEP) in the Film Industry” This project will develop new data-driven approaches for improving gender inequality in the international film industries. She is Director of the Kinomatics Project (http://kinomatics.com), an interdisciplinary study that collects, explores, analyses and represents "big data" about the creative industries. In addition to scholarly publications and media appearances, she has focused on the development of online research resources and platforms such as the Humanities Networked Infrastructure (HuNI - http://huni.net.au); WIDGET (the Workplace Inclusion Diversity and Gender Equity Tool), the Cinema and Audiences Research Project (CAARP - https://caarp.edu.au) database and The Ultimate Gig Guide (TUGG - https://tugg.me) an online archive of live music information.