Rong Tang is a Professor at the School of Library and Information Science, Simmons University. Her research interests center on usability and UX research, mobile news information behavior, research data management services, open government data, and paradigm shift in the field of information. Published in top-ranked journals, Rong Tang teaches primarily in areas of evaluation of information services, digital information services and providers, research methods and design, leadership and collaboration, leadership during crisis, theories of information science, and usability and user experience research. Her research areas span from research data management, open government data, usability and UX research, mobile news information seeking behavior, to paradigm shifts in the field of information science.

Since 2018, Rong Tang has been a Co-Leader for the Research Data Management Librarian Academy (RDMLA), which currently has close to 7,500 learners from countries around the world. Rong is also a Co-Leader for the Data Services Continuing Professional Education (DSCPE) which started in October 2022. Rong Tang is the founding Director of Simmons Usability Lab. She serves as a Co-Director of the PhD Program at SLIS. Rong has received multiple grants including a WGBH subcontracted grant from NEH (National Endowment of the Humanities) in 2017 and an IMLS grant in 2019 on developing interprofessional informationist (IPI) post-master’s certificate program. Within Simmons SLIS, Rong is the founding and current Co-Director of the UX and Immersive Technologies Lab. She is a faculty co-advisor for Simmons ASIS&T Student Chapter.

Professionally, Rong Tang serves as the President for Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) 2022-2023. She served as the Director for External Relations for ALISE from 2017 to 2020.