Supporting Young Investigators Summer Research Institutes of the Consortium for the Science of Socio-Technical Systems

Syracuse University, Syracuse NY

Investigators

Abstract

This award will fund two years of Summer Institutes for young investigators of socio-technical systems. The Summer Institutes are designed to foster intellectual depth and development among the young researchers who attend. These workshops will be managed by the Consortium for the Science of Socio-Technical Systems (CSST). The CSST resulted from recognizing the growing importance of research on the interplay of humans and technology, or socio-technical systems as identified by prior intellectual and community building efforts of the NSF. The CSST involves faculty members in diverse fields, such as social informatics, social computing, CSCW, computational social science, HCI, and information science. The Summer Institute select late stage graduate students and early stage faculty for participation in the program through competitive review of a research based submission. Through an intensive multi-day program the Summer Institute provides an opportunity for research programs to be shaped through intellectual exchange with more experienced researchers as well as enhanced through collaboration with other young researchers. The intellectual experience during the Summer Institute facilitates creation of a social network among the participants and with several senior researchers who serve as instructors for the Institute. This network plays a major role in the professional development of the participants and in the evolution of the field of socio-technical systems research. The diversity of Summer Institute participants (e.g., institutional, disciplinary, geographic, gender, minority group status), serves to broaden participants' perspectives at a critical stage in their careers. In addition, there will be more attention to organizing the CSST and developing more ways to increase the visibility of the CSST activities.