CU Boulder Computer Science Professor Leysia Palen and University of Washington Human Centered Design & Engineering Professor Kate Starbird have received a Best Paper award at the 2013 Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW) conference, which is taking place February 23-27 in San Antonio, Texas. Their paper, "Working and Sustaining the Virtual 'Disaster Desk'," follows the trajectory of Humanity Road, a volunteer organization working within the domain of disaster response, from an emergent group to a formal nonprofit. Starbird recently blogged about the paper at crowdresearch.org.
Starbird and Palen will present the paper at CSCW on February 25. Starbird graduated from the University of Colorado, Boulder, in 2012 with Palen as her advisor. She also worked with Palen as a member of Project EPIC (Empowering the Public in Crisis).