WORKSHOP: Summer Institute on Sociotechnical Systems and Sciences

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This is funding to cover airfare and ground travel for approximately 40 student participants, as well as certain other expenses associated with, the 5th Young Investigators Summer Institute that is being organized by the PI under the auspices of the Consortium for the Science of Socio-Technical Systems (CSST), and which will be held July 29-August, 2012, at Bishop's Lodge in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The CSST resulted from recognition of the growing importance of research on the interplay of humans and technology. The science of socio-technical systems (SST) is fundamental to the rapidly growing "virtual organizations" thematic area, among others, thus the urgent national need for research that is firmly grounded in the SST tradition. Yet this community of scholars, which includes faculty in diverse fields such as social informatics, social computing, CSCW, computational social science, HCI, and information science, remains fractured and largely invisible.The CSST series of Summer Institutes is a critical step toward unifying this diverse community and enhancing its visibility, by providing an immersive experience for the next generation of SST leaders (both advanced doctoral students and pre-tenure faculty) so that they will be well prepared to engage in distributed scientific inquiry. The Summer Institutes build critical intellectual and social capital by fostering creation of a cohort group of new researchers whose work is shaped by hearing experts in socio-technical systems research provide encouragement and give advice on how to advance the field's intellectual basis, methodological approaches, and potential for sustained, meaningful and even transformative impact. The 2012 workshop will adhere to the successful format that has evolved and been refined over the course of the prior Summer Institutes. The workshop will bring together early career researchers selected through a competitive review process with a set of more senior researchers for an intensive five-day research exchange. The event will be residential and located in a semi-isolated locale to encourage the maximum amount of social interaction among participants. Senior faculty, junior faculty, and advanced doctoral students will collectively strive to articulate in more coherent and contemporary forms the basic principles, goals and approaches to doing socio-technical science across a range of relevant intellectual communities. They will explore topics and methods for advancing the science of socio-technical systems, while focusing on intellectual development of individual research that is aligned with core aspects of the socio-technical perspective. Broader Impacts: The diversity of Summer Institute participants across a number of dimensions (e.g., institutional, disciplinary, geographic, gender, minority group status), serves to broaden participants' perspectives at a critical stage in their careers. The immersive intellectual experience during the workshop will facilitate creation of a social network among the participants and the senior researchers who serve as instructors for the Summer Institute. This network will play a major role both in the professional development of the participants and in the evolution of the field of socio-technical systems research.