We are pleased to announce that Alondra Nelson, Harold F. Linder Chair in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, is our 2026 Miles Conrad awardee. The award is named for the founder of the National Federation of Abstracting and Indexing Services (NFAIS), which merged with NISO in 2019, and recognizes distinguished lifetime achievement in moving us toward a world where all can benefit from the unfettered exchange of information. Dr. Nelson will receive the award and deliver the Miles Conrad Lecture on February 17 during the 2026 NISO Plus conference in Baltimore.
During the Biden administration, Dr. Nelson served as deputy assistant to the president and acting director and principal deputy director for science and society in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). In this role, she was instrumental in the development of White House policy on artificial intelligence, leading work on the “Blueprint for a Bill of AI Rights.” Under her leadership, the OSTP also developed national policy to make federally funded research publicly available upon publication and advanced federal scientific integrity guidelines. Her tenure at the OSTP led to her inclusion in the Nature’s 10 list in 2022, and in 2023, she was named one of TIME’s 100 most influential people in AI.
Dr. Nelson’s academic research focuses on science, technology, and society, particularly on race, inequality, and emerging science and technologies. Her book publications include The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation After the Genome (a 2016 Favorite Book of the Wall Street Journal), and she has also contributed to Science, PLOS Computational Biology, PLOS Medicine, Genetics in Medicine, the Proceedings of the International Conference on Machine Learning, and the American Journal of Public Health. Among her many accolades are the MIT Morison Prize, the NAACP-Archewell Digital Civil Rights Award, and the Sage-Center for Advanced Study’s Behavioral Science Award from Stanford University.
Dr. Nelson holds a BA in anthropology from the University of California, San Diego, a PhD in American Studies from New York University, and several honorary degrees. Prior to her role at the Institute for Advanced Study, she was dean and founder of Columbia University’s Social Sciences Division as well as professor at Yale University.
Todd Carpenter, NISO’s Executive Director, stated, “We are honored to recognize Dr. Nelson’s contributions to the information community at the NISO Plus Baltimore Conference. Her work to advance equity and help ensure technology safely and effectively serves all has become even more critical with the rapid development of AI technologies and their adoption. We are very much looking forward to hearing her lecture as we gather to consider the latest challenges and opportunities in scholarly communications.”
