Press Release:
When Tammy Toscos, an assistant professor of health
informatics at IPFW, submitted her doctoral dissertation to the Indiana University School of
Informatics and Computing, she had no idea she would gain
national recognition for her work.
Toscos was recently honored at iConference 2013, the annual meeting for
iSchools, a national organization whose mission is to advance the
information field, with the iSchools Doctoral Dissertation Award.
According to information from SOIC, “Sixteen dissertations were
submitted to the competition, and from that pool three semi-finalists
were selected. Each one received reviews from a pool of 16 reviewers,
including 14 iSchool Ph.D. program chairs.”
“Tammy’s dissertation, titled “Digital Vigilance: Pervasive
Technology for Children with Type 1 Diabetes” investigates how to
design technologies to help children with type 1 diabetes and their
families transition the child from parent-care to self-care.”
Toscos said she was honored just to have her dissertation nominated by
the faculty at IU SOIC, “I am blessed to have a collage of amazingly
supportive people in all areas of my life. But honestly, the best
feelings I had about the award came during a moment I shared with
someone from the crowd at the award ceremony. She came to talk with me
after the event because her daughter had recently been diagnosed with
type 1 diabetes at age 8. I was able to share my experiences with her as
a researcher and a mom of a kid with type 1 diabetes. It was at that
moment, the six years of Ph.D. work suddenly seemed to have great
purpose.”
Carol Sternberger, associate vice chancellor for faculty development
and chair of the Department of Nursing, said, “Having a tenure-track
informaticist faculty member in the Department of Nursing is a coup for
IPFW. Tammy’s expertise in human-computer interaction design and her
passion for teaching enriches the education of our students and
ultimately will impact the healthcare delivery systems where our
students are employed. Her research is fascinating and energizing and
the graduate students are thrilled to work with Tammy on their capstone
projects. At the department level, Tammy is a faculty role model in
advancing research and the seamless integration of technologies in
healthcare education.”
Besides her work as an IPFW faculty member, Toscos is also Postdoctoral
Health Services Research Fellow at Regenstrief Institute and the Indiana
University School of Medicine in Indianapolis. She received a Master of
Science in applied computer science in 2002.
