UMBS Information Manager, Kyle Kwaiser, received the 2012 LSA Information Technology (IT) Collaboration and Innovation Award during a staff recognition ceremony December 7.  The award recognizes the considerable help he gave to staff in the LSA Dean's Office to develop a web-based research and scholarship Data Profile Tool.   This will assist faculty in classifying and protecting their research.

Kwaiser has extensive experience building such a system, having created a research portal for UMBS almost from scratch.  When the Station created an Information Manager position, it was to facilitate collecting, organizing and sharing UMBS-based research.  The existing website could not do the sophisticated cross-referencing and secure file storage that the Station needed. So Kwaiser made a new website using the open source software, Drupal.

LSA's Data Profile Tool also uses Drupal.  Kwaiser says that made it easy for him to help with the project.  "There was a lot less to teach myself and there were more contributors, including an actual web developer."  

The IT Collaboration and Innovation Award recognizes an IT development that has had the greatest overall impact on LSA operational and/or business practices over the previous year.