About
My research is focused on enhancing data curation and discovery through computational methods including machine learning and natural language processing. My projects are supported in part by NSF awards including Transforming Data Discovery Through Behavior Modeling and Recommendation, which investigates the potential to connect users to relevant data through recommender systems.
I hold a Ph.D. in Geography with an emphasis in Information Technology and Society from UC Santa Barbara. I was previously a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Michigan's Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). I am currently a Research Methodologist in the Methodology & Quantitative Social Sciences Department at NORC at the University of Chicago.
Imagery Credit: UCSB Aerial Photography Collection (San Gabriel Mountains, 1952)
Projects
Charting data user search paths
Surfacing specimen citations
Detecting data citation communities
Retrieving informal data references
Predicting data curation activities
Mapping multi-disciplinary research
Recommending surf locations
Spatializing research objects
Increasing GIS usability
Discovering open civic data
Validating damage proxy maps
Publications
Hemphill, L., Thomer, A., Lafia, S., Fan, L., Bleckley, D, and Moss, E. (2024). A dataset for measuring the impact of research data and their curation. Scientific Data, 11(1), 442. doi:10.1038/s41597-024-03303-2
Lafia, S., Million, A. J., and Hemphill, L. (2024). Exploratory and directed search strategies at a social science data archive. IASSIST Quarterly, 48(1). doi:10.29173/iq1087
Fan, L., Lafia, S., Li, L., Fangyuan, Y., and Hemphill, L. (2023). DataChat: Prototyping a Conversational Agent for Dataset Search and Visualization. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T). doi:10.1002/pra2.820
Fan, L., Lafia, S., Wofford, M., Thomer, A., Yakel, E., and Hemphill, L. (2023). Mining Semantic Relations in Data References to Understand the Roles of Research Data in Academic Literature. In Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL). doi:JCDL57899.2023.00039
Lafia, S., Bleckley, D.A., and Alexander, J.T. (2023). Digitizing and parsing semi-structured historical administrative documents from the GI Bill mortgage guarantee program. Journal of Documentation. doi:10.1108/JD-03-2023-0055
Lafia, S., Thomer, A., Moss, E., Bleckley, D., and Hemphill, L. (2023). How and Why do Researchers Reference Data? A Study of Rhetorical Features and Functions of Data References in Academic Articles. Data Science Journal. doi:10.5334/dsj-2023-010
Lafia, S., Million, A. J., and Hemphill, L. (2023). Direct, Orienting, and Scenic Paths: How Users Navigate Search in a Research Data Archive. Proceedings of the ACM on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (CHIIR). doi:10.1145/3576840.3578275
Thomer, A., Akmon, D., York, J., Tyler, A.R.B., Polasek, F., Lafia, S., Hemphill, L., and Yakel, E. (2022). The Craft and Coordination of Data Curation: Complicating Workflow Views of Data Science. Proceedings of the ACM on Human Computer Interaction (PACM HCI). doi:10.1145/3555139
Lafia, S., Fan, L., Thomer, A., and Hemphill, L. (2022). Subdivisions and Crossroads: Identifying Hidden Community Structures in a Data Archive's Citation Network. Quantitative Science Studies (QSS). doi:10.1162/qss_a_00209
Lafia, S., Fan, L., and Hemphill, L. (2022). A Natural Language Processing Pipeline for Detecting Informal Data References in Academic Literature. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T). doi:10.1002/pra2.614
Hemphill, L., Pienta, A., Lafia, S., Akmon, D., and Bleckley, D. (2022). How do properties of data, their curation, and their funding relate to reuse? Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIST). doi:10.1002/asi.24646
Lafia, S., Thomer, A., Bleckley, D., Akmon, D., and Hemphill, L. (2021). Leveraging Machine Learning to Detect Data Curation Activities. In Proceedings of 17th IEEE eScience 2021, Innsbruck, Austria, September 20-23. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). doi:10.1109/eScience51609.2021.00025
Lafia, S., Kuhn, W., Caylor, K., and Hemphill, L. (2021). Mapping Research Topics at Multiple Levels of Detail. Patterns, 100210. doi:10.1016/j.patter.2021.100210
Lafia, S., Zhu, R., Regalia, B., and Kuhn, W. (2021). Reimagining GIS Instruction through Concept-Based Learning. AGILE: GIScience Series, 2, 1-7. doi:10.5194/agile-giss-2-6-2021
Hervey, T., Lafia, S., and Kuhn, W. (2020). Search Facets and Ranking in Geospatial Dataset Search. 11th International Conference on Geographic Information Science (GIScience 2021). Schloss Dagstuhl-Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik. doi:10.4230/LIPIcs.GIScience.2021.I.5
Lafia, S., Last, C., and Kuhn, W. (2019). Enabling the Discovery of Thematically Related Research Objects with Systematic Spatializations. In 14th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT 2019). Schloss Dagstuhl-Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik. doi:10.4230/LIPIcs.COSIT.2019.18
Lafia, S., Xiao, J., Kuhn, W., and Hervey, T. (2019). Talk of the Town: Discovering Government Data via Conversational Voice Assistants. In 14th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT 2019). Schloss Dagstuhl-Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik. doi:10.4230/LIPIcs.COSIT.2019.10
Seltmann, K., Lafia, S., Paul, D., James, S., Bloom, D., Rios, N., ... and Davis, E. (2018). Georeferencing for Research Use (GRU): An integrated geospatial training paradigm for biocollections researchers and data providers. Research Ideas and Outcomes, 4, e32449. doi:10.3897/rio.4.e32449
Lafia, S. and Kuhn, W. (2018). Spatial Discovery of Linked Research Datasets and Documents at a Spatially Enabled Research Library. Journal of Map and Geography Libraries, 1-19. doi:10.1080/15420353.2018.1478923
Coggins, B. L., Lafia, S., and Torghabeh, B. V. (2018). Dramatic change in North Korea: Instability and human flight propensity. North Korean Review, 14(1), 49-70. ISSN:1551-2789
Lafia, S., Turner, A., and Kuhn, W. (2018). Improving Discovery of Open Civic Data. In 10th International Conference on Geographic Information Science (GIScience 2018). Schloss Dagstuhl-Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik. doi:10.4230/LIPIcs.GISCIENCE.2018.9
Allen, C., Hervey, T., Lafia, S., Phillips, D. W., Vahedi, B., and Kuhn, W. (2016). Exploring the Notion of Spatial Lenses. In International Conference on Geographic Information Science. Springer, Cham. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-45738-3_17
Lafia, S., Jablonski, J., Kuhn, W., Cooley, S. and Medrano, F. A. (2016). Spatial discovery and the research library. Transactions in GIS, 20: 399–412. doi:10.1111/tgis.12235
Golubovic, N., Krintz, C., Wolski, R., Lafia, S., Hervey, T., and Kuhn, W. (2016). Extracting Spatial Information from Social Media in Support of Agricultural Management Decisions. In Proceedings of the 10th Workshop on Geographic Information Retrieval. ACM. doi:10.1145/3003464.3003468
Lafia, S. and Staehli, L. (2016). From Research Objects to Research Networks: Combining Spatial and Semantic Search. In SDW @GIScience: Proceedings of the Workshop on Spatial Data on the Web (pp. 35-40). ISSN:1613-0073
Teaching
