Skip to main content

Farida Vis elected to Big Boulder Initiative Board of Directors!


Farida Vis, Faculty Research Fellow, has been elected to the Big Boulder Initiative Board of Directors. The Big Boulder Initiative is dedicated to the advancement of social data in businesses and organizations of all kinds. The BBI bring together representatives from companies within the ecosystem to collectively address key challenges in order to establish the foundation for the long-term success of the social data industry.

Alongside Farida, two other new board members were elected: Justin De Graaf, Global Media Insights Director at The Coca-Cola Company and Mark Josephson, CEO of Bitly.

The BBI board is chaired by Chris Moody, VP for Data Strategy at Twitter. In an official press release he welcomed the new board members by stating: “On behalf of myself and the entire board of directors, we are excited to have three new voices join the discussion as we kick-off 2015. With these additions, we have strong representation from the social data ecosystem that will help us drive our mission forward.”

The board is further strengthened through additional formidable support from representatives from Brandwatch, IBM, NetBase and Twitter.

Being part of this board as the only academic and only member from Europe is an important and exciting opportunity, not just for Farida and the Information School, but also for The University of Sheffield, in terms of profile and impact potential in this rapidly growing area of research. Having someone on board who has an understanding of the key issues concerning academia is a positive development.

The Big Boulder Initiative organizes an annual conference at which Farida spoke last summer and which also offered the opportunity to launch her exciting new research initiative: The Visual Social Media Lab, which is supported through funding from the ESRC.

Farida will attend her first board meeting in San Francisco next week and we look forward to following Farida’s progress on the BBI Board of Directors! Farida tweets as @flygirltwo. The full press release can be viewed here: bitly.com/BBI2015

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Raspberry Pi Weather Project now live

A project to create a raspberry pi weather station is currently live in the Information School.  The Sheffield Pi weather station has been created by Romilly Close, undergraduate Aerospace Engineering student at the University of Sheffield.  The project was funded by the Sheffield Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) scheme and is being supervised by Dr Jo Bates, Paula Goodale and Fred Sonnenwald from the Information School. Information about the Sheffield Pi station and how to create your own can be found on the project website .  You can also see live data from the Sheffield Pi station on Plot.ly , and further information can also be found on the Met Office Weather Observations Website .    This work compliments the School’s existing project entitled ‘The Secret Life of a Weather Datum’ which explores socio-cultural influences on weather data.  This project is funded under the AHRC’s Digital Transformations Big Data call.  It aims to pilot a new approach to im

Our Chemoinformatics Group wins Jason Farradane Award

The Information School's Chemoinformatics Research Group has been awarded the 2012 UKeiG Jason Farradane Award , in recognition of its outstanding 40 year contribution to the information field. The prize is awarded to the three current members of the group,  Professor Val Gillet , Dr John Holliday and Professor Peter Willett . The judges recognised the Group's status as one of the world's leading centres of chemoinformatics research, a major contributor to the field of information science, and an exemplar in raising the profile of the information profession. The School has a long association with the Farradane prize. Its second recipient was long time member of staff Professor Mike Lynch in 1980.

Professor Mike Thelwall gives inaugural lecture

Professor of Data Science Mike Thelwall recently gave his inaugural lecture at the University of Sheffield, entitled  How helpful are AI and bibliometrics for assessing the quality of academic research? The lecture, delivered in the University's Diamond building, was introduced by Head of the Information School Professor Briony Birdi. It covered Mike's research into whether Artificial Intelligence can inform - or replace - expert peer review in the journal article publication process and what this could look like, as well as to what extent bibliometrics and citation statistics can play a role in assessing the quality of a piece of research. Mike also discussed whether tools like ChatGPT can accurately detect research quality. The inaugural lecture was well attended by colleagues from around the University.