Bangladeshi researcher wins a prestigious academic award in Sweden
Dr. M. Sirajul Islam (age 38), a Bangladeshi researcher in Sweden received the ‘Börje Langefors second best doctoral dissertation award’ (or Börje Langeforspriset in Swedish) in Informatics/Information Systems in Sweden for the year 2011 from the Swedish Academy of Information Systems (Svenska informationssystemakademin, sisa-net.se). The title of his dissertation is “Creating Opportunity by Connecting the Unconnected: Deploying Mobile Phone based Agriculture Market Information Service for Farmers in Bangladesh”. The award was conferred on May 9, 2012 in a befitting manner during the annual conference of the Academy hosted at the Linkoping University, Sweden.
The Academy, SISA, which comprises academics and leading researchers from universities and institutions in Sweden, has been known as a Swedish think-tank that aims to contribute to the coordination and promotion to research and education in the discipline known as Information Systems, Information Science or Information Systems in Sweden.
Börje Langefors Award is a prestigious academic honor awarded each year by SISA for the best doctoral dissertation in Sweden in the study areas -informatics, information systems, Data and Information Science or equivalent. The prize aims to reward as well as encourage development of high standard research in Sweden, and to demonstrate exemplary research in informatics. This award has been named after Professor Börje Langefor (1915-2009), one of those who made systems development a science. Professor Börje was a Swedish engineer and computer scientist, and Emeritus Professor of Business Information Systems in Sweden.
The motivation for the award conferred to Dr. Siraj as stated: “Sirajul Islam‘s dissertation reports a design-oriented action research project that sought to create sustainable societal effects by facilitating mobile technology adoption. One interesting aspect of this change effort is that it nicely illustrates how informatics research can help underprivileged groups to strengthen their positions through innovative IT use. The research project was executed through a well-designed process that is presented in a comprehensive yet detailed way. In particular, it reveals how and why certain practical and theoretical issues were tackled to push the project forward. Constituting the core of the thesis, the set of articles suggests that the result produced were not only locally relevant but also globally impactful.”
Dr. Siraj is presently working as an Assistant Professor in Informatics at the Örebro University, Sweden and Coordinating the ‘International Network for Postgraduate Students in the Area of ICT4D (IPID)’. He is a member of the ICT for development (ICT4D) research group at the Informatics department of the same university. He has several research publications in the area of ICT4D and eGovernment published in reputed international journals and conferences. He is a recipient of the ‘Strengthening ICTD Research Capacity in Asia (SIRCA-I)’ fellowship from the Nanyang Technology University, Singapore and serving as a reviewer and program committee member for some international journals and conferences related to ICT4D and eGovernment research. Dr. Siraj was born in Station-Bargacha at the Natore district. He is the youngest son of late Md. Rafiqul Islam, a distinguished businessman of Natore municipality.
For more information please visit at http://www.sasnet.lu.se/content/orebro-university-doctoral-dissertation-awarded-academic-prize
