SIM DAD LLC · A practice statement · May 2026

Make sure your
message lands.

A communication consulting practice · Edwardsville, 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 24 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. 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. The work scales to fit the client. A local business sharpening its public-facing messaging gets the same methodological care as a multi-institution research program. The difference is scope, not rigor.

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, not guesswork. 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: $1.59M awarded, multi-institution consortium managed across MSU, SIUE, and four partner institutions.

  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.

We also build software tools that grew out of our research work — each available on its own site.

Contact

hello@simdadllc.com ap@simdadllc.com

Expertise

External communication strategy

Social & digital media analysis

Research design & data analysis

NLP & computational text analysis

Leadership

Alex P. Leith — Founder Janet V. Leith — COO
§ 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 across 887,888 unique users. We’ve negotiated formal data agreements with Riot Games for League of Legends avatar data and with VRChat for social VR research. We co-led a $1.59 million NSF Future-of-Work consortium across MSU, SIUE, and four partner institutions, leading to eight peer-reviewed publications.

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 numbers are the substrate. The methods are the practice. Both come with us into every consulting engagement.

Alex P. Leith SIM DAD LLC · Edwardsville, Illinois · May 2026
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

§ IV
Tools we publish.

Our research practice produces software that makes sense to release publicly. Each tool lives at its own site with full details and pricing.

§ 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. NSF Co-PI on a $1.59M award with formal research partnerships at Riot Games and 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 — reach out directly.

Links

aleith@siue.edu apleith.github.io github.com/apleith ORCID 0000-0003-1310-6763

Affiliations

SIM Lab @ SIUE Meaningful XR Beyond Meet Space
Riot Games

Formal data-access agreement to analyze 5M+ proprietary avatar gender choice records from League of Legends. Findings published in peer-reviewed journal.

VRChat

Established formal platform collaboration 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

  • 2025 Lim, C., …Leith, A.P. Zoom fatigue, impression management, and virtual meeting adoption intent. PLOS One.
  • 2022 Foxman, M., …Leith, A.P. Beyond genre: Classifying virtual reality experiences. IEEE Transactions on Games, 14(3).
  • 2021 Leith, A.P. Parasocial cues: The ubiquity of parasocial relationships on Twitch. Communication Monographs, 88(1), 111–129.

Full publication list: apleith.github.io

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 serves as the company’s C-level project manager — overseeing daily operations, coordinating cross-functional workstreams, and ensuring project goals are met on time and to standard.