2018 Award Winner
Allen S. Lee
Dr. Allen S. Lee is Professor Emeritus of Information Systems at Virginia Commonwealth University. He was a full professor at VCU from 1998 to 2017 and, in 2012, was named a Dean’s Scholar Professor. He served as associate dean at both VCU and McGill University, as editor-in-chief of MIS Quarterly, and as a founding senior editor of MIS Quarterly Executive. His research program over three decades has involved identifying basic lessons from the philosophy and history of science and applying them, in the information systems discipline, to show not only how qualitative research can be done rigorously, but also how quantitative research equally needs to live up to the requirements of science. Recently he has taught doctoral seminars on systems theory, social theory, and qualitative research methods, as well as undergraduate database courses.
He is a Fellow of the Association for Information Systems, a member of the Circle of Compadres of the Information Systems Doctoral Students Association (ISDSA) of the KPMG Ph.D. Project, and a founder of Chinese American Professors of Information Systems. In 2015, he received the LEO Award for “lifetime exceptional achievement in information systems” from the Association for Information Systems.
His work has been published in journals such as European Journal of Information Systems, JASIST, Information Processing & Management, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, Communications of the AIS, Journal of Database Management, Small Group Research, and others. He has published more than 50 journal articles, book chapters, and conference papers. He is co-author of a leading data management textbook, Modern Database Management, with Jeffrey A. Hoffer and V. Ramesh, co-editor of IS Management Handbook and Computing Handbook, 3rd Edition: Information Systems and Information Technology, and co-editor of Education Department of CAIS.
A native of New York City’s Chinatown, he graduated from Public School 23 and Junior High School 22 (both in Manhattan), and from Brooklyn Technical High School. His bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees are from Cornell University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, respectively. Currently, he is also an honorary professor at the University of Sydney Business School. He was previously an honorary professor at Queen’s University Belfast and a visiting professor at the London School of Economics.