Second Young Investigators Summer Research Institute of the Consortium for the Science of Socio-Technical Systems

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The Second Young Investigators Summer Research Institute will be a continuing activity of the Consortium for the Science of Socio-Technical Systems (CSST). CSST was born out of a series of workshops sponsored by NSF involving over forty faculty members in diverse fields, such as social informatics, social computing, CSCW, computational social science, HCI, and information science. Workshop participants, recognizing the growing importance of research on the interplay of humans and technology, or socio-technical systems, proposed the CSST as a mechanism for promoting and supporting important research on social aspects of technological change. An identified high priority, even in advance of the formal creation of CSST, was initiation of an annual series of summer research institutes targeted at people entering the field of sociotechnical systems research. This proposal will support the second of these institutes to be held on the campus of the University of Michigan in July, 2009. The inaugural institute was very successful attracting 137 applications with a selected class of 31 participants and thirteen institute faculty. Student participants will include up to 30 advanced doctoral students and pre-tenure faculty doing research on socio-technical systems. Up to fifteen instructors will be drawn from senior faculty, including participants in the original NSF-supported workshops on sociotechnical systems. This project will support the travel, meals, and accommodations for all Institute participants.Intellectual MeritThe focus of the Institute will be on participants' research programs (e.g., dissertation for doctoral students). The Institute provides both an opportunity for these programs to be shaped through intellectual exchange with experienced researchers as well as enhanced through collaboration with other young researchers. In addition, the Institute will help spread ideas about research on socio-technical systems within the US and around the world.Broader ImpactThe Institute will continue to bring together the best of the next generation of socio-technical system researchers. This allows them to create a social network both among themselves and with several senior researchers, which will play a major role in their professional development and in the evolution of the field of socio-technical systems research. The diversity of Institute participants (e.g., institutional, disciplinary, geographic, gender, minority group status), will broaden participant's perspectives at a critical stage in their careers.