Matthew Schroyer is a drone and data journalist based in Urbana, Illinois. He is developing drone technology and small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (sUAV) for use in journalistic enterprises. To this end, he has founded the Professional Society of Drone Journalists (PSDJ), located at DroneJournalism.org. He's written for newspapers, alternative newsweeklies and news websites about presidential campaigns, energy, pollution, local politics, public housing, poverty, musicians, school board meetings and assorted slices of life. He holds a master's in journalism University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he was a contributor to CU-CitizenAccess.org, a community news website funded by the Knight Foundation. While a graduate student, he taught journalism and helped produce CampusCrime.net, an interactive web site using data journalism practices to report on crime at UIUC, which won an Mark of Excellence award from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). Full-time, he now works on a National Science Foundation grant at the University of Illinois called EnLiST, which offers leadership training and professional development for K-12 science teachers. There, he performs a variety of duties as a communications specialist and social network analyst. He also heads “Drones for Schools” program, a project-based learning initiative where high school students learn STEM concepts and practice engineering design as they build and operate their own unmanned aerial vehicles for photomapping missions. He is available as a consultant to teach news organizations how to adopt data journalism strategies and utilize drones for low-cost, high-impact investigative reporting. He blogs at MentalMuniton.com and occasionally contributes to the small unmanned systems news website SUASNews.com.

---