Two scholars from UALR’s Information Quality Graduate Program tied for second place for the 2012 Donald Ballou and Harold Pazer Information Quality Dissertation Award from the International Conference on Information Quality (ICIQ).

UALR alum Dr. Ahmed Abi-Halimeh and his paper, “Integrating Information Quality in Visual Analytics,” tied with fellow UALR alumna Dr. Yinle Zhou and her dissertation for “Modeling and Design of Entity Information in Entity Resolution Systems.” A graduate from Purdue University placed first.

Abu-Halimeh’s adviser was Professor Mihail Tudoreanu. Professor John R. Talburt advised Zhou. The IQ program is part of the Donaghey College of Engineering and Information Technology (EIT).

The Ballou-Pazer Award recognizes dissertations that demonstrate the most significant contributions to the information quality field within the two calendar years prior to the annual conference. This year’s awards will be given at the ICIQ conference in Paris from Wednesday through Saturday, Nov. 15 to 17.

The Ballou-Pazer Competition and Award was established at the 2007 ICIQ conference in honor of Professors Emeritae Donald Ballou of the University at Albany School of Business and Harold Pazer of Washington State University for their groundbreaking work to investigate information quality from the information system perspective.

Established in 2006 by the UALR Donaghey College of Engineering and Information Technology (EIT) in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Information Quality (MIT IQ) Program, the UALR Information Quality Graduate Program is dedicated to promoting state-of-the-art curriculum in information quality education, contributing new ideas to the information quality knowledge base, and establishing information quality partnerships with the community, government, and industry.