Informatics Professor Geoffrey Bowker was awarded two grants in August totaling more than $632,000 for support of his project, “Collaborative Research: Institutionalizing the Data Sciences, a Sociotechnical Investigation of BDHubs.” Bowker will serve as PI for the project, while working in collaboration with University of Washington Professor David Ribes of the University of Washington. The grants are set to run between August 2016 and July 2019.

According to the abstract, “This project will investigate the ongoing activities at the [Big Data Hubs and Spokes (BDHubs) program] and its partner institutions, their emerging plans for the future, and tie these to the long-history of developing research infrastructures (50+ years) to understand the changes we can expect BDHubs to encounter over time (scientific, technological and institutional), and what strategies they employ in the face of transformations to the landscape of science, information technology and institutional environment. Read the full NSF award abstract.

Bowker’s primary research interests include the areas of social informatics, digital scholarship and science and technology studies. He is also director of UC Irvine’s Values in Design Laboratory whose mission it is to train researchers in the broad range of disciplines necessary (including nnformatics, computer science, design and science and technology studies) to produce new forms of information systems and technology which express/perform strong social and ethical values.