Andrew has been an active researcher of the human response to information technology for the last 20 years, graduating from the National University of Ireland (M.A. first class) and Loughborough University of Technology before being appointed Research Fellow at the Human Sciences & Advanced Technology Research Institute in the UK. He moved to Indiana University in 1994 where, amongst other duties, he developed and served as the founding Director of the Masters in Human-Computer Interaction at the School of Informatics. He joined the University of Texas at Austin in January 2002 as Dean and Professor of the School of Information.
Defying professional categorization, he has held appointments in departments or schools of cognitive science, computer science, psychology, instructional systems technology, management information systems, library and information science, and informatics. Having published more than 100 articles and books on various aspects of an information behavior and design, Andrew serves or has served on the editorial boards of many leading journals such as the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, Interacting with Computers, the Journal of Documentation, and the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. He has contributed invited entries for the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, the International Encyclopedia of Ergonomics & Human Factors and the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science and has received research funding from NSF, Microsoft, and CEC among others.
He advocates a view of information science as a means of accelerating discovery and shaping a more democratic world.