SIM DAD LLCA practice statementOctober 2026

Make sure your
message lands.

A communication consulting practiceMetro East, IL

SIM DAD LLC is a communication consulting practice led by Dr. Alex P. Leith, Associate Professor at SIUE. We help organizations audit and strengthen their external communications, including websites, press materials, social media, and reports, using the same research methods behind 22 peer-reviewed publications. Whether you need a one-time audit or ongoing advisory, we meet you where you are.

SIM DAD stands for Social and Interactive Media Data Analysis and Design, and the name describes the work: we study how messages travel through social and interactive media, and we turn that evidence into recommendations a client can act on.

A local business sharpening its messaging gets the same methodological care as a multi-institution research program.

§ I

Four practice areas.

The work scales to fit the client. Every engagement starts with a conversation about what you actually need, and ends with deliverables you can act on.

  1. 01

    Communication audits.

    We review your external-facing communications, including website copy, press releases, social media, reports, and email campaigns, and deliver a structured assessment of what is working, what is not, and what to change. Grounded in communication research. Suitable for businesses, nonprofits, and institutions of any size.

  2. 02

    Research consulting.

    Study design, data collection and analysis, survey research, and publication-ready findings. We work with academic teams, nonprofits, media organizations, and companies who need rigorous methods without building an in-house research team.

  3. 03

    Grant partnerships.

    Available as Co-PI or senior collaborator on federal and foundation grants, particularly NSF programs in HCI, communication, and future-of-work. Established track record: PI of the SIUE award in a $1.6M, four-institution NSF Future of Work collaboration with Michigan State, Oregon, and Wisconsin-Whitewater.

  4. 04

    Speaking & workshops.

    Conference presentations, organizational workshops, and training sessions on social media strategy, communication research methods, and applied data analysis. Tailored to your audience: from executive briefings to hands-on team workshops.

§ II

About SIM DAD LLC.

SIM DAD (Social and Interactive Media Data Analysis and Design) is a consulting practice that brings academic research rigor to real-world communication challenges. We started as a research operation, and that foundation shows up in everything we do: structured methods, evidence-based recommendations, and findings that hold up under scrutiny.

Our background is in large-scale data analysis and peer-reviewed research, but our consulting work scales to fit the client. A local business looking to sharpen its public-facing messaging gets the same methodological care as a multi-institution research program. The difference is scope, not rigor.

The practice also builds the software it needs. These companion tools come directly out of the research and client work, and each is released on its own site.

§ III

Built on research.

We’ve collected 321 million Twitch messages across 117,943 channels. We’ve built research corpora of 2.8 million tweets. We’ve analyzed proprietary League of Legends avatar data as part of a research team with formal access from Riot Games, published in a peer-reviewed journal, and built a working relationship with VRChat leadership for social VR research. Alex was PI of the SIUE award in a $1.6 million, four-institution NSF Future of Work collaboration.

Our surveys have reached 2,448+ respondents across studies of virtual meetings, Zoom fatigue, social interaction anxiety, and avatar use. Our methodology spans NLP and structural topic modeling, large-scale survey, semi-structured interviews, controlled experiments, and VR prototype user testing: a full mixed-methods pipeline operating end-to-end on a single research program.

The same methods come with us into every consulting engagement.

Alex P. Leith

SIM DAD LLCMetro East, IllinoisOctober 2026

§ IV

Tools from the work.

The consulting is what drives the software. A research problem or a client engagement surfaces a need we cannot buy off the shelf, so we build the tool for our own work. The suite is in active development: TASS and Lector are in closed beta, the rest are coming soon, and each site carries a live development log.

  1. 01
    Ibis
    Local transcriptionWindowscoming soon

    Private, local transcription: audio in, text and captions out, entirely on your own machine. Built for the interviews and recordings a research or newsroom workflow cannot send to a cloud service.

    useibis.app →
  2. 02
    TASS
    Text analysisno-codeclosed beta

    No-code text analysis built on open, citable dictionaries, with group comparisons and publication-ready charts. The analysis tool from our own research practice, packaged for social scientists and journalists.

    usetass.app →
  3. 03
    Lector
    Writing + read-aloudprivate beta

    A distraction-free writing environment that reads your draft back to you, so you catch what you actually wrote rather than what you meant. Local by default.

    uselector.app →
  4. 04
    Orator
    Documents to narrated videocoming soon

    Turns a Markdown or Quarto document into a narrated video, voiced locally on your own machine. Built for lectures, briefings, and course material that change often enough that re-recording by hand is not worth it.

    useorator.app →
  5. 05
    Velamen
    De-identificationengine open source

    Finds structured identifiers in text and transcripts, shows every finding for review before it is replaced, and records what was checked and what was found. Built with the intention to support adherence to standards such as HIPAA Safe Harbor, FERPA, and the GDPR; it does not certify compliance.

    engine on GitHub →
  6. 06
    Resero
    The workbenchcoming soon

    The SIM DAD workbench: one private, local home that ties the whole suite together, so your material and the tools that work on it live in one place on your own machine.

    useresero.app →

§ V

Leadership.

Alex P. Leith
Founder
Alex P. Leith

Associate Professor of Mass Communications at SIUE. Mixed-methods researcher and data scientist with 10+ years of experience designing studies, analyzing large-scale behavioral datasets, and building the software to support both. PI of the SIUE award in a $1.6M, four-institution NSF collaboration, with research experience spanning proprietary Riot Games data and NSF-funded fieldwork in VRChat. Domain expertise in social VR/XR, parasocial media and streaming, virtual meetings and remote work, and NLP and computational text analysis. Alex is available for research consulting, speaking engagements, and grant collaborations in these areas. Email him directly.

League of Legends avatar study

Analyzed 5M+ proprietary avatar gender-choice records from League of Legends as part of a research team with formal data access. Findings published in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.

Social VR research

Built a working relationship with platform leadership for NSF-funded social VR research: 1.4M+ tweets, in-world behavioral data collection, and avatar observation methodology.

Meaningful XR

Co-founding organizer of a peer-reviewed annual academic conference on XR research, now in its third year (MXR 2026, University of Oregon Portland).

Selected Publications

  • 2022 Leith, A.P., & Gheen, E. Twitch in the time of quarantine: The role of engagement in needs fulfillment. Psychology of Popular Media, 11(3), 275–280.
  • 2021 Leith, A.P. Parasocial cues: The ubiquity of parasocial relationships on Twitch. Communication Monographs, 88(1), 111–129.
  • 2019 Ratan, R.A., Fordham, J., Leith, A.P., & Williams, D. Women keep it real: Avatar gender choice in League of Legends. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 22, 254–257.
  • 2025 Lim, C., …Leith, A.P. Zoom fatigue, impression management, and virtual meeting adoption intent. PLOS One.

Full publication list: apleith.com

Janet V. Leith
Chief Operating Officer
Janet V. Leith

Janet brings a background in business and management alongside extensive professional experience as a paraprofessional. As COO, she is the company’s project manager: she runs daily operations, coordinates the work across the practice and the software, and keeps projects on time and to standard.

Get in touch

Tell us what you are working on. Whether it is a communication audit, a research collaboration, or a grant partnership, we respond to every inquiry. Email is the best way. Describe what you need and we will get back with next steps, a scope estimate, and pricing.

General inquiries hello@simdadllc.com

Press ap@simdadllc.com