Laura Challman Anderson

Laura Challman Anderson is a Staff Research Scientist at the IBM Research – Almaden laboratory in San Jose, California, with extensive experience managing and mentoring scientific and technical teams, project management, and chemical informatics projects using patent data. She completed a PhD (2016) in Information Ecology from the SJSU Gateway PhD program with Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia (Dissertation: Information Sharing in Virtual Collaboration - http://eprints.qut.edu.au/92454/ ). In 2016 Laura transitioned to a social science research position with a focus on the practices, collaboration, organizational and information dynamics of scientific and technical teams.

Laura has published recently on the role of information sharing on employee engagement and organizational leadership (2021, 2023). Her work on information sharing in distance collaboration enabled the development of a model of six key areas of scientific and technical team diversity that are important for effective collaboration. Laura has utilized cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), and repertory grid methods in her work. She holds graduate degrees in Information Science (Syracuse University) and Computer Science (Pace University). and has received two best paper awards (2021, 2023), was recognized with the Tribute to Women in Industry award (2000), and numerous IBM technical awards including Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards in 2011 and 2015.

Her research interests: Information Sharing, Analytics, Collaboration, Organizational dynamics (employee engagement and leadership), and Information Behavior; as well as Distributed Teams; Project Management; Software Engineering; Knowledge Management; and Service Systems.