NSF Grant Funds Pitt Professor's Research to Explore Triggers of Intergroup Conflict in Cyberinfrastructure Projects

PITTSBURGH-Laurie Kirsch, professor of business administration in the University of Pittsburgh's Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business, recently received a National Science Foundation award to explore and attempt to understand the triggers of intergroup conflict-or "faultlines"-among stakeholders engaged in cyberinfrastructure projects. The research project, "Collaborative Research: Identifying Faultlines, Circumventing Faultline Eruptions, and Mitigating the Effects of Faultlines," led by Kirsch, will take place during the next three years.

The research, funded by a grant worth approximately $300,000, will specifically study projects being developed by Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI), a virtual laboratory for developing experimental infrastructure for computer scientists and network engineers to carry out their experiments. GENI creates major opportunities to understand, innovate, and transform global networks.

"The management of large-scale information technology development projects is challenging, in large part because of their sheer scale, scope, and complexity," says Kirsch. "As a result, this research could have broad application. Understanding how conflict can be anticipated, avoided, or mitigated has the potential to positively impact project stakeholders as well as the broader society, which is the ultimate beneficiary of the innovations that GENI may stimulate."

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