American Medical Informatics Doctoral Consortium

Pennsylvania State Univ University Park, University Park PA

Investigators

Abstract

This is a 12-month standard award to support a Doctoral Colloquium program at the American Medical Informatics (AMIA) 2008 Annual Symposium to be held in Washington, DC (November 8-12, 2008). This will bring together approximately 10 dissertation-stage doctoral students in the field of Health Care Informatics for one day of talks and interaction with 5 distinguished senior faculty mentors. Although doctoral consortiums are common activities in other domains such as computer science, information sciences, and engineering, they are not well-known in the medical informatics community. Yet, there is a growing need to provide a forum for doctoral students to share their work and also network with other doctoral students and researchers. The goal of the consortium is to support the doctoral students through constructive remarks and feedback on their research from prominent researchers and interaction with other students. The consortium is interested in student participants from a broad range of disciplines and approaches that inform medical informatics, including computer science, information science, and engineering. Intellectual Merit: The consortium provides a forum for students engaged in inter- and multi-disciplinary scholarship focusing on organizational and social issues surrounding healthcare technologies. It functions as a forum for expert and peer critique of the students' doctoral work with the goal of improving their dissertations. Broader Impact: The consortium brings together people who might not engage with one another otherwise which exposes them to different scientific disciplinary research approaches and questions, fosters a supportive mentoring network for young researchers, and ultimately helps develop the next generation of scientists and educators in fields related to the development and use of technology in healthcare related fields.