Hamid R. Ekbia, Ph.D. - US grants

This is funding to support travel for a diverse group of US PhD students and distinguished faculty mentors to participate in an international doctoral consortium on research on information science that will be co-located with the 2012 iConference in Toronto, Canada. The iConference is a leading forum that brings together faculty, students, research staff, and industry researchers who share an interest in supporting and augmenting human engagement with information and technology. The main goal of this Doctoral Colloquium is to help train the next generation of information science researchers.

The 2012 iConference Doctoral Consortium will provide a group of approximately 20 PhD students studying all aspects of information science (IS) with an environment in which they can share and discuss their goals, methods and results at an early stage of their research. It will take place on February 10, 2012, the final day of the iConference. By participating in the doctoral consortium, students will gain feedback on their work from other students and six prominent faculty members, allowing them to enhance their own research proposal. Students will also develop a better understanding of the different research communities engaged in the study of information science, and learn how to position their own work within the IS community. In addition, the consortium will provide students with opportunities to make new professional connections beyond their own disciplines.

Students will be recruited for the doctoral consortium through advertisement on the conference website, postings to relevant mailing lists and direct solicitation to faculty working in the area of information science and related fields. Particular attention will be placed on identifying participants from under-represented groups. To apply for the consortium, students will submit a 1000 word paper outlining their research goals and work to date, a list of key questions they would like to discuss with other doctoral consortium attendees, and the names of people they consider prominent in their areas of research. Applications will be screened by the consortium chairs for fit to the IS topic area, the state of development of the student's research, and the quality of the research project. Priority will be given to students who have proposed their dissertation topic but not yet attended any doctoral consortia.

Broader impacts: The iConference doctoral consortia traditionally bring together the best of the next generation of researchers in information science and related areas, allowing them to create a social network both among themselves and with senior researchers at a critical stage in their professional development. Participation is encouraged from a broad range of relevant disciplines and approaches, thereby broadening attendees' perspectives on their topics of study and promoting advancement of the field. The organizers will try explicitly to identify and include the broadest possible group of highly qualified participants. As a consequence of these steps, the student and faculty participants will constitute a diverse group across a variety of dimensions, which will help broaden the students' horizons to the future benefit of the field.

This project applies the methods and principles of bioengineering in the design and development of a tele-rehabilitation platform to allow stroke, traumatic brain injury, and spinal cord injury patients to interact with therapists, with family members, and with other patients. The quality of life of these patients depends on longer-term exercise-based rehabilitation and support from the above groups. While frequent repetition of these exercises is critical to recovery, data indicates that compliance is very low. The proposed project seeks to increase compliance by increasing motivation through individual and multiplayer gaming, providing guidance and feedback, and enabling the therapist to monitor progress. Researchers use a combination of motion tracking technology, video games, and therapist oversight to accomplish increased compliance. The platform has three key components:
1. A set of computer games prescribed to patients by therapists;
2. A therapist portal to allow therapists to evaluate the patient, provide feedback and instructions, and coordinate with other providers in the course of treatment;
3. An evidence-based knowledgebase for the analysis of therapy outcomes for various types of patients, conditions, and therapy regimes.

Two major shifts define the current trend in rehabilitation: The first is the shift toward evidence-based medicine. The second is the shift in rehabilitation from neuro-development, which emphasizes accurate performance of prescribed movements, to neuroplasticity, which emphasizes repetition and frequency. From a neuroplasticity perspective, the more repetitions of a movement, the stronger the identification fabric becomes as neurons rebuild their connections. The proposed project leverages current technology (motion tracking, gaming, cloud services, and data analytics) to enable both of these shifts in therapy. It involves patentable innovations in three key areas of patient-centered workflow development tools, collaborative stroke rehabilitation processes, and evidence-based therapy using data analytics techniques.

This is funding to support travel for a diverse group of U.S. PhD students and distinguished faculty mentors to participate in a doctoral colloquium (workshop) on research on information science that will be co-located with the 2013 iConference to be hosted by the University of North Texas in Fort Worth on February 11-15. The iConferences, the annual meetings of the iSchool community, are a leading forum that brings together faculty, students, research staff, and industry practitoners with a common interest in supporting and augmenting human engagement with information and technology. Open to broad participation, the iConferences have been successful in building a sense of community around the information field, bringing together people who otherwise might rarely interact with one another, and helping them share findings and exchange views relating to their interdisciplinary research. More information about the iConference may be found online at http://www.ischools.org/iConference13/participation,

The 2013 iConference Doctoral Colloquium, which will take place on February 15, 2013 (the final day of the iConference), will be a research-focused meeting of about 25 selected Ph.D. candidates studying all aspects of information science (IS), along with approximately 10 distinguished mentors. The primary objective of the Doctoral Colloquium is to help train the next generation of information science researchers. To this end, it will provide the student participants with an environment in which they can share and discuss their goals, methods and results at an early stage of their research. By participating in the doctoral colloquium, students will gain feedback on their work both from the mentors and from other students, which should allow them to enhance their research. Students will also develop a better understanding of the different research communities engaged in the study of information science, and learn how to position their work within the IS community. In addition, the colloquium will provide students with opportunities to make new professional connections beyond their own disciplines.

Broader Impacts: The iConference doctoral colloquia traditionally bring together the best of the next generation of researchers in information science and related areas, allowing them to create a social network both among themselves and with senior researchers at a critical stage in their professional development. Participation is encouraged from a broad range of relevant disciplines and approaches, thereby broadening attendees' perspectives on their topics of study and promoting advancement of the field. No more than one student will be accepted from any given institution, and priority will be given to students who have not previously attended an iConference Doctoral Colloquium. The organizers will proactively work to include women and minority representation among the student participants to the extent possible. As a consequence of these steps, the student and faculty participants will constitute a diverse group across a variety of dimensions, which will help broaden the students' horizons to the future benefit of the field.

Care work is a mainstay of modern societies. The provision of care at the right time and the right place is crucial for the welfare and wellbeing of children, the elderly, the disabled, and individuals dealing with health issues. Because of the changing demographics, more and more American households will have both children and aging parents, as well as other individuals with various health conditions, who need care and support. The current model of care is not going to be able to provide this support because it is fragmented between various settings and providers such as nursing homes, hospitals, daycares, and senior- and childcare facilities. This fragmentation, in turn, gives rise to issues of transition and continuity of care, generating insurmountable financial and social costs. To overcome these issues, this project proposes 'the matrix of care' as a community-based, socially embedded, and interactive model of care using intelligent technologies based on a new understanding of care work. The proposed matrix will transform the landscape of the Future of Work in the provision of care and medical services.

As a first step in this direction, the investigators propose to think of care work not solely as what happens in professional settings, but more broadly as any activity that aims to improve and enrich the health, wellbeing, and quality of life of individuals, families, and communities, regardless of context. This includes, among other things, housekeeping (e.g. cleaning, cooking), shopping, emotional support, help with dressing and personal hygiene, eating, lifting, administrative tasks (e.g. paying bills, filing taxes), safely getting around, and doing laundry. The resulting matrix of care will span across scales (individual, household, organization, community, city) and various dimensions, including different settings of care delivery (homes, facilities, hospitals, etc.) for multiple generations (children, adults, older adults) in different environments (urban, rural, suburban). The investigators also propose to think of caregivers not solely in terms of paid professional workers but as anyone who is involved in the delivery of care. This would involve professional caregivers (nurses, doctors, therapists, coaches, etc.) but also immediate and extended family, neighbors, and other members of the community. On this basis, the project will pursue a multi-pronged approach with the following key components: (i) the training, promotion, and regulation of professional caregivers; (ii) institutional and government support for family and community care; (iii) the provision of skilled individuals who can act as integrators at the interface between cared-for individuals, their families, and various new technologies. Such technologies will include assistive robots sensing devices attached to individuals or distributed in the environments; domain- and condition-specific applications; transportation infrastructures; telehealth, telerehab, and telemedicine platforms; and cognitive augmentation systems such as games. The project will develop several case studies to be carried out in the city of Bloomington, Indiana, as a testbed for experimenting with the proposed matrix of care. The ultimate goal of this project is to develop the necessary research personnel, research infrastructure, and foundational work to expand the opportunities for studying future technology, future workers, and future work at the level of a FW-HTF full research proposal.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.