NDSA:Micah Altman

Micah Altman, Harvard University

Biography:
Micah Altman (Ph.D. California Institute of Technology) is Senior Research Scientist in the Institute for Quantitative Social Science in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University and Archival Director of the Henry A. Murray Research Archive.

Dr. Altman conducts research in social science informatics, social science research methodology, and American politics, focusing on the intersection of information, technology, and politics; and on the dissemination, preservation, and reliability of scientific knowledge.
His current research interests include information confidentiality; computationally reliable and efficient statistical methods; the collection, sharing, citation and preservation of research data; the creation and analysis of networks of scientific knowledge; and computational methods of redistricting.

Dr. Altman's work has been recognized by the Supreme Court, and national media. His extensively-reviewed book, Numerical Issues in Statistical Computing for the Social Scientist, corrects common computational errors made across the range of social sciences. And his over fifty publications and six open-source software packages span informatics, statistics, computer science, political science, and other social-science disciplines.

For a full vita see: http://maltman.hmdc.harvard.edu/vita.shtml

Interest in serving on the Coordinating Committee:
Digital preservation has been the focus of the Murray Archive since its creation, and has been a focus of my research for more than a decade.
The NDSA is uniquely positioned to articulate pivotal preservation challenges; to identify emerging preservation practices; and to catalyze a community of practitioners, and scholars in industry, academia, government and memory institutions. I aim to use my experience as a social scientist (by training); a tool developer (by inclination), and a librarian & archivist (by profession) to contribute to assisting NDSA in its mission.

Communities represented:
Academia, social science researchers, data archives.

Length of Term:
3 years (ending December 31, 2013)