The National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) has announced that Sarah Morrison-Smith, Roman Family Teaching and Research Fellow of Computer Science at Barnard College, will receive a grant for her research on life science data sharing. The grant is awarded to support research independence among early-career academics who would benefit from additional access to certain organizational resources. The award Morrison-Smith will receive is funded under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).
Her project, titled “CRII: HCC: RUI: Transparency and Access Control in Life Science Data Sharing,” examines the challenges of data sharing in life sciences research and places usability at the forefront of the design. Morrison-Smith and her research team will explore new approaches and challenges to facilitating data sharing between life science through ethnographic interviews and by developing new data-sharing systems that will potentially simplify and expedite the process. This new software system will address usability breakdowns in existing systems and provides features missing from commonly used, off-the-shelf products.