This spring, University of Pittsburgh Professor Ilia Murtazashvili was awarded the prestigious Chester A. Newland Award for Best Practitioner Commentary or Viewpoint for his article titled, “Blockchains for Emergency and Crisis Management.”
Presented by Public Administration Review (PAR), the premier professional journal of the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA), the Newland Award recognizes the best viewpoint article published by PAR in the past year. Murtazashvili received the honor alongside collaborator and co-author Dr. Wendy Chen, an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Texas Tech University.
In their article, the pair address the increasing scale and prevalence of crises facing public managers and administrators and consider how distributed ledger technologies, such as blockchain, can improve emergency and crisis management across the dimensions of transparency, public trust, and social equity.
Reflecting on this achievement, Murtazashvili shared, “Wonderful news from Public Administration Review. Truly a joy to work with Wendy Chen on this paper and looking forward to our continued collaboration on our research on blockchain and their role in public administrations and governance, including through Pitt’s Center for Governance and Markets (CGM) initiative on governance of emergent technology.”
In his role as co-director at CGM, Murtazashvili will help host the Center’s “Ostromian Analysis of Technology” workshop, a joint initiative with the Institute for Regulatory Law and Economics, later this month. He is also involved in the Pitt AI Scholar Teacher Alliance (PASTA), and currently active in research projects addressing issues including barriers to more effective policing on tribal lands, increasing internet and broadband access on Native Nations, understanding the impact of Artificial Intelligence on the Rust Belt labor market, and the political and economic challenges to well-being in Afghanistan. More information about CGM and its various areas of research can be found on the Center’s website.