SC&I Associate Professor of Communication J. Sophia Fu has been named the 2025 recipient of the Early Career Scholar Award by the International Communication Association (ICA). The award, according to the ICA, “honors a scholar no more than seven years past receipt of the Ph.D. for a body of work that has contributed to knowledge of the field of communication and shows promise for continued development.”

“I am thrilled to share that Sophia Fu has won the ICA’s prestigious Early Career Scholar Award,” said SC&I Interim Dean Dafna Lemish. “Sophia’s outstanding research accomplishments center around organizations, social networks, information and communication technologies (ICTs), entrepreneurship, innovation, and computational social science.”

Professor and Chair of the Communication Department Marya Doerfel said, “We’re proud—but not the least bit surprised—that Sophia earned the Early Career Award. Her research tackles how organizations collaborate, compete, and adapt in a complex world, from innovation and social entrepreneurship to faith-based and nonprofit partnerships. She’s a prolific scholar, an inspiring educator, and a leader in the field of organizational communication.”

Fu received the award at the 75th Annual ICA Conference held from June 12-16 in Denver, Colorado. The theme of this year’s conference was “Disrupting and Consolidating Communication Research.”

“I am deeply honored and truly humbled to accept this award,” Fu said. “It means more than I can fully express, and I would like to thank the ICA and the selection committee for this generous recognition. I am incredibly grateful for ICA's work in supporting scholars across the globe and fostering a vibrant intellectual community.”

The award selection process, according to the ICA, is conducted “by the selection committee that judges the contribution and promise of early career scholars based on the strength of published work, including its conceptual foundation and argumentative clarity, on the scholar's productivity at a given career stage, on the rigor of the research produced so far, and on the promise of existing work serving as a springboard for continuing scholarship.”

Fu’s research is motivated by one question: “How can organizations more effectively catalyze organizational and social change?” Her research program focuses on how organizations can implement ICTs, design their interorganizational networks, and navigate institutional environments to more effectively catalyze organizational and social change.

She is particularly interested in how new ICTs, such as social media, artificial intelligence, and big data and analytics tools, enable organizations to communicate with external stakeholders in new ways; how the new communication processes can change organizational and interorganizational structures; and how shifts in organizational and interorganizational structures impact organizational, network, and community outcomes. The aim in these streams of research is to help address grand challenges, such as public health challenges, environmental degradation, and social exclusion.

Fu uses multiple methods, such as interviews, surveys, content analysis, social network analysis, and statistical modeling, to examine the dynamic processes of organizing for public value creation. She has won awards for her research from the Academy of Management, International Communication Association, National Communication Association, Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action, International Chinese Communication Association, and National Science Foundation.

“As the saying goes, it truly takes a village—and I got this award because of the incredible people who have supported, challenged, and inspired me along the way,” Fu said. “I thank my family, mentors, friends, collaborators, colleagues, students, nominators, and so many good people and good things for their unwavering love, patience, generosity, and belief in me. Their support has been my foundation. I also want to express my deep appreciation to the many scholars who have come before me, as I stand on their shoulders with gratitude and awe. I accept this honor with deep humility and renewed commitment to the community that brought me here. This recognition is deeply meaningful, but I also see it as just the beginning—part of something much bigger and more important that will keep me moving forward.”

The ICA aims to advance the scholarly study of communication by encouraging and facilitating excellence in academic research worldwide, according to the website.  The ICA began more than 50 years ago as a small association of U.S. researchers and is now a truly international association with more than 5,000 members in over 80 countries. Since 2003, ICA has been officially associated with the United Nations as a non-governmental association (NGO).

Learn more about the Communication Department at the Rutgers School of Communication and Information on the website.