About The Forum

After successful events in 2019, 2021, and 2023 the Expert Finder Systems Forum is back for another exciting event in 2025. This year's theme, "Charting the Research Information Universe," reflects the goals of facilitating knowledge sharing about expert finder systems (EFS), considering and influencing future directions, and supporting community building.

EFS Forum 2025 will welcome practitioners from the university, research, and economic development communities to explore

  • Community- and system-building
  • Promising practices
  • Value proposition and sustainability
  • Evolving platforms and applications
  • Role of libraries in research information management systems
  • EFS and economic development
  • RIMS, FARS, EFS, and analytics

Attendees will have opportunities to share ideas and information about the current uses of such systems, the need for new features to support emerging uses, best practices for starting and managing a system, and strategies for enhancing stakeholder engagement.

The forum also offers the opportunity to build a community of practice and explore the possibility of establishing a professional organization to provide leadership and develop ongoing events

Goals

Understand

  • Stakeholders and their goals
  • Challenges in developing systems for research information management, collaboration, economic development, and more
  • How EFS supports economic development

Explore

  • Research on EFS community- and system-building
  • Promising practices
  • Platforms and applications
  • Value proposition and sustainability strategies
  • Role of libraries in RIM systems
  • Industry uses of EFS
  • Researcher disambiguation strategies
  • Semantic Web, taxonomies, and ontologies
  • Use cases

Connect

  • Network with other stakeholders
  • Discuss challenges and priorities
  • Create a community of practice

Schedule
2025
Tuesday, September 16th
1:00 PM

Conference Opening

Clarke Iakovakis, Oklahoma State University

1:00 PM - 1:20 PM

Visit Site
1:20 PM

Keynote Address: Driving Industry and Higher Education Research Partnerships at CWRU

Steve Fening, Case Western Reserve University

1:20 PM - 2:00 PM
2:00 PM

Discovery in Context: Regional Insights into Expert Data from Symplectic Elements

Alexandra Winzeler, Digital Science

2:00 PM - 2:10 PM
2:20 PM

Exploring Research Impact Across the Research Universe

Andrea Malone, University of Houston
Connie Stovall, The Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Emily K. Hart, Syracuse University
Alexandra Winzeler, Digital Science

2:20 PM - 3:00 PM
3:00 PM

Esploro: Where Innovation Meets Impact

Deron Morgan, Clarivate

3:00 PM - 3:10 PM

Visit Site
3:20 PM

An AI-Powered Toolset for Research Information Management: Developing Solutions to Automate Committee Service Data and Promote Balanced Service Distribution

Jason Glenn, Carnegie Mellon University
Dom Jebbia, Carnegie Mellon University

3:20 PM - 3:50 PM
3:50 PM

Expertise in Impact: Enhancing Researcher Discoverability and Knowledge Mobilization through AI in a RIMS-Driven Environment

MacKinley Darlington, Athabasca University Press
Sean Newell, Elsevier
Paul Daniels, Victoria University

3:50 PM - 4:20 PM
4:20 PM

VIVO: AI-Ready, Affordable, Community-Driven, and Versatile

Bryan Cooper, Vivo Connect
Bruce Herbert, Texas A&M University

4:20 PM - 4:25 PM
4:25 PM

Harvesting Impact: Building a Thriving Research Ecosystem with Esploro

Andii Johnson, University of West Florida
Cindy Gruwell, University of West Florida

4:25 PM - 4:55 PM
Wednesday, September 17th
1:10 PM

The role of RIM systems in communicating the value of universities to the public

Ann Beynon, Clarivate
Jason Reece, The Ohio State University
Michael Oakes, Case Western Reserve University

1:10 PM - 1:50 PM
1:50 PM

Promoting the Value of Research with an EFS: NSF Tip Project

Randy Love, Elsevier

1:50 PM - 2:00 PM
2:00 PM

Charting a Constellation of RIMS Social Interoperability: Stakeholder Engagement at Two Midwestern Universities

Mark Zulauf, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Elizabeth Schwartz, Washington University in St. Louis

2:00 PM - 2:30 PM
2:40 PM

Evaluating User Engagement in a Research Information Management System at a Large Research-intensive University

Rachel Miles, Virginia Tech University
Emily Mazure, Virginia Tech University
Mengyu Yin, Virginia Tech University
Ben Greenwald, Virginia Tech University

2:40 PM - 3:10 PM
3:10 PM

FAIR Instruments and Facilities: Assigning and adopting persistent identifier (PID) standards for research facilities and instruments

Renaine Julian, Florida State University
Stephanie Faulkner, Academic Analytics

3:10 PM - 3:40 PM
4:30 PM

Bring It Home: Turning EFS Insights into Action (come ready with paper and a marker)

Shannyn Lee, West Arete
Natalie Simonson, West Arete

4:30 PM - 5:00 PM
Thursday, September 18th
2:05 PM

Implementation of Symplectic Elements at Indiana University

Brandalynn White, Indiana University - Bloomington
Akash Shah, Indiana University - Bloomington
Lora Fox, Indiana University - Bloomington
Willie Miller, Indiana University - Bloomington
Logan Paul, Indiana University - Bloomington

2:05 PM - 2:35 PM
2:35 PM

Making your Faculty Information System a tool Faculty actually want to use!

Jenny Hulsen, Academic Analytics
Jami Thompson, Academic Analytics

2:35 PM - 2:55 PM
2:55 PM

Better Data, Smarter Decisions: An Intro to Academic Analytics

Stephanie Faulkner, Academic Analytics

2:55 PM - 3:00 PM
3:10 PM

Lost in Translation? Using Generative AI to make academic expertise easier for partners to discover

Jackson Anderson, Digital Science
Timothy Cain, Ohio University

3:10 PM - 3:40 PM