ICS News Archive

Informatics team finalists for iConference Lee Dirks Award for Best Paper

An Informatics team, including Assistant Project Scientist Kathleen H. Pine, Associate Professor Melissa Mazmanian and graduate student Chris Wolf, has been nominated for the iSchools Lee Dirks Award for Best Paper. Their paper, “The Work of Reuse: Birth Certificate Data and Healthcare Accountability Measurements,” assesses the key information science concept of data reuse in the practice of recording birth certificate data. It documents an ethnographic study of ways to “assess and improve birth certificate data in response to a new re-use of birth certificate data for measurements introduced to hold hospitals accountable for the quality of the care they are delivering,” according to the paper abstract.

The team will present on their paper at this month’s iConference, the annual gathering for iSchools—the international consortium of information schools. The Lee Dirks Award is named in honor of the late Lee Dirks, director for portfolio strategy at Microsoft Research Connections and a long-time friend and supporter of the iConference. The award “recognizes the most exceptional completed research paper presented at the iConference each year,” according to iSchools. Recipients of the award will receive a crystal trophy and a $5,000 prize courtesy of Microsoft Research. The winners will be announced during iConference 2016, which is scheduled for March 20-23, 2016 in Philadelphia.