AIS Honors Excellence in Information Systems

The Association for Information Systems recently honored leaders in the field of information systems during the 2020 International Conference on Information Systems. Honorees have continued to work tirelessly to educate, research, and serve the field through continued engagement and contribution.

The AIS Leadership Excellence Award is given annually to a single person for leadership and innovation in the use and development of information systems. Narayana Murthy Founder, Infosys Limited, is the recipient of the 2020 AIS Leadership Excellence Award.

The AIS LEO Award for Lifetime Exceptional Achievement in information systems, named after one of the world’s first commercial applications of computing (The Lyons Electronic Office), recognizes truly outstanding individuals in the information systems community, both academics and practitioners, who have made exceptional contributions to research in and/or the practice of information systems.  2020 LEO Award winners include:

• Dr. Cynthia Beath
• Dr. Varun Grover
• Dr. Elena Karahanna
• Dr. Jae Kyu Lee

The AIS Fellow Award recognizes individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the information systems discipline in terms of research, teaching and service. 2020 AIS Fellows include:

• Pär Ågerfalk
• Brent Gallupe
• Wei (Wayne) Huang
• Mary Lacity
• Annette Mills
• Fred Niederman
• Gabe Piccoli
• Matti Rossi

The AIS Doctoral Student Service Award recognizes volunteer contributions made by doctoral students toward the success of AIS conferences, journals and programs. 2020 AIS Doctoral Student Service Award winners are:

• Tawfiq Alashoor, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals
• Akshat Lakhiwal, Indiana University - Bloomington
• Carol Lee, University of Massachusetts Boston
• Yijing Li, University of New South Wales Business School
• Pitso Tsibolane, University of Cape Town
• Wei Zhang, Georgia State University

The Sandra Slaughter Service Award recognizes longstanding members who have provided leadership within the Association, particularly through such activities as participating in the SIGs/chapters/colleges, strengthening the conferences, and participating in AIS-sponsored journals. The 2020 Sandra Slaughter Service Award winners are:

• Jan DeGross, University of Minnesota
• Antoine Harfouche, USJ
• Eleanor Loiacono, The College of William & Mary
• Dawn Owens, University of Texas - Dallas
• Jason Thatcher, Temple University
• Eric van Heck, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University
• Ryan Wright, University of Virginia

The AIS Early Career Award recognizes individuals in the early stages of their careers who have already made outstanding research, teaching, and/or service contributions to the field of information systems. 2020 AIS Early Career Award winners are:

• Zachary Steelman, University of Arkansas
• Vilma Todri, Emory University
• Nina Huang, University of Houston
• Matthias Soellner, University of Kassel
• Markus Salo, University of Jyväskylä
• John Dong, University of Groningen
• Marten Risius, University of Queensland

AIS is excited to introduce a new award this year, the AIS Impact Award, to recognize the impact of information systems research beyond academia. Impactful research can be a powerful individual motivator. Seeing that one's own research delivers societal value and helps business succeed is rewarding in its own right. Winners include:

• Alok Gupta, Wolfgang Ketter, Yixin Lu,
  Huong May Truong, Eric van Heck and for their work on Artificial Intelligence in the Floriculture Chain.
• Shan Pan, Haibo Hu, Lili Cui, Tingting Huang, and Delin Zeng for their work on Digital Enablement Project (DEP) for Sustainable Educational Development: A Digital Literacy Program for Children in Remote Villages of China.
• Hsinchun Chen for work on COPLINK - Managing Law Enforcement
  Data and Knowledge

The AIS Vision Award is given to those who have contributed to the technology vision for the association. The VISION award is given to those who have articulated a strategic thrust for the association. The 2020 AIS Vision Award goes to:

• Alan Dennis, AIS Past-President
• ECIS 2020 Conference Co-Chairs; Frantz Rowe, Redouane El Amrani, and Moez Limayem.
• AMCIS 2020 Conference Co-Chairs; Bonnie Anderson, and Jason Thatcher,
• PACIS 2020 Conference Co-Chairs; Doug Vogel, Kathy Ning Shen, and Pan Shan Ling.

The AIS Technology Challenge Award is given to those who make significant contributions to the development of AIS resources. This year, AIS Challenge award winners worked to develop and deliver fully virtual conferences using new and existing platforms to be successful. The 2020 AIS Technology Challenge Award winners are:

• ECIS 2020 Program Co-Chairs: Sue Newell, Nancy Pouloudi, and Eric van Heck.
• AMCIS Program Co-Chairs: Kathy Chudoba, Kelly Fadel, and Sue Brown.
• PACIS 2020 Program Co-Chairs; Carol Hsu, James Y.L. Thong, Sean Xin Xu, Marco De Marco, and Moez Limayem.

Each year, AIS recognizes those who have made important and innovative strides in information systems education by awarding three different awards to deserving candidates at the International Conference of Information Systems.

The winner of the AIS Award for Outstanding Contribution to IS Education goes to:

• Jan Marco Leimeister, University of St. Gallen & University of Kassel

The AIS Award for Innovation in Teaching recognizes innovation in teaching approaches/techniques (pedagogy) as well as in delivering courses and programs. This award specifically focuses on the uniqueness/innovativeness that increases student interest and drives achievement. The 2020 Innovation in Teaching award goes to:

• Gabriele Piccoli, Louisiana State University and University of Pavia
• Joaquin Rodriquez, Louisiana State University
• Biagio Palese, Northern Illinois University
• Marcin Bartosiak, University of Pavia

The AIS Award for Best Conference Paper in IS Education recognizes the importance of pedagogy research in the Information Systems field. Papers that focus on IS education-related topics at any AIS sponsored or affiliated conference are eligible for the award. The award goes to:

• SMU Teaching Bank: Case Study of a Multiyear Development Project Utilizing Student Resources by Alan Megargel, Terence Fan Ping-Ching , and Venky Shankararaman.

Unfortunately Rolf Wigand, retired Maulden-Entergy Chair and Distinguished Professor of Information Science and Management at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, passed away on September 25. He was a founding and charter member of AIS. AIS honors him with the Distinguished Member Memorial Award.

The Senior Scholars have annually recognized up to five papers with a Best Information Systems (IS) Publications Award. This award was established to recognize the breadth of high quality work that is being published in the information systems discipline, and was designed to bring outstanding papers across a range of journals to the attention of the IS community, and to give due credit to the journals in which they are published. 2020 winners include:

• “Data-Driven Computationally Intensive Theory Development” By Nicholas Berente, Stefan Seidel, and Hani Safadi for the journal Information Systems Research.
• “Expecting the unexpected: effects of data collection design choices on the quality of crowdsourced user-generated content” By Roman Lukyanenko, Jeffrey Parsons, Yolanda F. Wiersma, and Mahed Maddah for MIS Quarterly.
• “Digital Transformation Requires Workforce Transformation” By Rebekah Eden, Andrew Burton-Jones, Veronica Casey, and Michael Draheim for MIS Quarterly Executive.

The ACM SIGMIS Doctoral Dissertation Award has been awarded annually to at least one outstanding MIS dissertation. The 2020 ACM SIGMIS Doctoral Dissertation Award goes to Jeffrey K. Mullins at the University of Arkansas for his paper Getting Serious about Games: A Study of Work and Play through Information Systems.

ICIS 2020 also  featured numerous excellent papers.

Best Student Papers included;

• “Synthesizing Winning Strategies: What Differentiates Experienced Solvers in Crowdsourcing Markets?” by Mikhail Lysyakov and Siva Viswanathan from the University of Maryland
• “PERSONA: Personality-Based Deep Learning for Detecting Hate Speech” by Kyuhan Lee and Sudha Ram from the University of Arizona

Best Theory Papers included:

• Runner up: “The Anatomy of User Experience with Conversational Agents: A Taxonomy and Propositions of Service Clues” by Naim Zierau, Thiemo Wambsganss, Andreas Janson, Sofia Schöbel, and Jan Marco Leimeister
• Winner: “Open Communities and Formal Organizations: A Symbiosis View” by Tanner Skousen, Hani Safadi, and Rick Watson.

Kauffman Best Student Papers included:

• Runner up: “The Impact of AI-Powered Shelf Monitoring on Product Sales” by Yipu Deng, Jinyang Zheng, Liqiang Huang and Karthik Kannan
• Winner: “Can Digital Platforms help SMEs Develop Organizational Capabilities? A Qualitative Field Study” by Ahmad Asadullah, Isam Faik, and Atreyi Kankanhalli

Kauffman Best Paper is:

“The Pursuit of Perfect Control and Ultimate Outreach: Social Fintech Platforms, Microcredit Agents and Surveillance” by Erica Souza Siqueira, Eduardo Henrique Diniz and Marlei Pozzebon

Best Short Papers include:

• Second runner up: “Personalized discount targeting with causal machine learning” by Alex Miller and Kartik Hosanagar from the University of Pennsylvania
• First runner up: “The Impact of Body-Worn Cameras on Routines and Performance in Police Organizations” by Dung Tien Nguyen, On-Ook Oh, Ronald Ramirez, Tony W. Tong, and Keith Guzik from the University of Colorado, Denver, and Abdul Sesay, from the University of Georgia
• Winner: “Rethinking IT Governance Structure and Action” by Gongtai Wang and Andrew Burton-Jones from the University of Queensland

Best Completed Research Papers include:

• Second runner up: “Digital Technologies in the Workplace: A Ne(s)t of Paradoxes” by Sabrina Schneider, University of Kassel and Olga Kokshagina, RMIT University
• First runner up: “Effects of Voice-Based AI in Customer Service: Evidence from a Natural Experiment” by Lingli Wang, Tsinghua University, Nina Huang, University of Houston, Yili Hong, University of Houston, Luning Liu, Harbin Institute of Technology, Xunhua Guo, Tsinghua University, and Guoqing Chen, Tsinghua University
• Winner: “Feature vs. Component Teams for New Software Development: The Mirroring Hypothesis Effects” by Vasilii Zorin, Schaffhausen Institute of Technology, and Jungpil Hahn from National University of Singapore