Trust Agreement for
Rada Research Trust
On
this day of Feb 20, 2023, I, Roy F. Rada, of Winter Park, Florida, hereby
establish the Rada Research Trust. and appoint myself as Trustee and declare
that this Trust is held and administered as follows.
This
Trust is being created to provide for the convenient administration of the
assets of this Trust without the necessity of court supervision in the event of
the Trustor’s incapacity or death.
Any
person shall deal with the Trustee without the approval of any court, the
Trustor, or any beneficiary of any Trust created by this Trust and shall assume
that the Trustee has the same power and authority to act as an individual does
in the management of his or her own affairs. No entity dealing with the
Trustee or keeping any assets of the Trust Estate shall be required to
investigate the authority of the Trustee for entering any transaction involving
assets of the Trust Estate.
To
facilitate the convenient administration of the Trust, including the
registration and transfer of assets to and from the Trust, the Trustee shall
have the power to execute an Abstract of Trust describing any Trust matter,
including but not limited to a description of the Trust terms, the
administrative powers of the Trustee, and the identity of any current Trustee. Any
person presented with a copy of the Abstract plus any other page of the Trust
shall accept same as conclusive proof of the terms and authority granted by
this Trust and shall assume that no conflicting directions or terms are
contained in the pages omitted.
Registration:
A Trust does not need to be registered with the Clerk of the Court in Florida.
Furthermore, upon the Death of the Trustor the Trust continues to not be
required to be registered with the Clerk of the Court. Unless in conflict with
applicable local law, this trust shall not be required to be registered and
shall be administered free from the act of supervision of any court.
During
the life of the Grantor, the Trust may be titled Rada Research Trust.
Tax
Identification: During the life of the Trustor, the Trustee reports to the IRS
through the Trustor’s Social Security Number of 310-50-0008. Upon the death of
the Trustor and the Trust becoming Irrevocable, the Trustee shall apply to the
IRS for a Federal Tax Identification Number for the Trust.
I
have carefully thought about the distributions set forth in this Trust and have
taken into consideration all individuals, including both relatives and
non-relatives, that have been named beneficiaries or who I determined not to
name beneficiaries.
If
any person shall, in any manner, directly or indirectly, attempt to contest or
oppose the validity of this agreement, (including any amendment to this
agreement) or commences, continues, or prosecutes any legal proceedings to set
this agreement aside, then such person shall no longer be a beneficiary of
mine. Across any Trust or other asset-holding instrument of mine which names
beneficiaries, that contestant shall forfeit his or her share, cease to have
any right or interest in the trust property, and shall, for purposes of this
agreement, be deemed to have predeceased me without living issue.
If
any provision of this Declaration of Trust is ruled unenforceable, the
remaining provisions shall stay in effect.
My
wife’s name is Pauline Elizabeth Rada. I have exactly three children:
·
Ray Max Rada born
March 15, 1998,
·
Rosa Rada born January
2, 1996, and
·
Roy Anthony Rada born
September 18, 1990.
My
son Ray and daughter Rosa are the children of my Wife and me. The unwed mother
of Roy against my wishes permanently left with Roy when he was a few weeks old.
1 Abstract 1
1.1 Trust Purpose. 1
1.2 Authority. 1
1.3 Abstract of Trust 1
1.4 Trust Registration and Tax Identification. 1
1.5 No Contest 1
1.6 Severability. 1
1.7 Family. 1
2 Table of Contents. 2
3 Trust Provisions During My Lifetime. 3
3.1 Funding, Income, and Principal 3
3.2 After my Death or Incapacity. 3
3.3 Revocation or Amendment 3
3.4 My Death. 3
4 Trust Provisions After My Death. 4
4.1 Beneficiaries. 4
4.2 Payment of Expenses of Estate on my Death. 4
4.3 Expenses on an Ongoing Basis. 4
4.4 Tax Consequences. 4
4.5 Prohibition of Alienation. 4
4.6 Disclaimer 4
4.7 Distribution of Assets. 4
4.8 Investments. 4
5 Trustees. 5
5.1 During my Lifetime. 5
5.2 Support during Incapacity. 5
5.3 Successors, Co-Trustees, and Decision Making. 5
5.4 Compensation of Trustee and Accounting. 6
5.5 Removal of Trustee and Liability. 6
5.6 Resignation of Trustee, Power to Appoint, and Bond. 6
6 Administration of the Trust 6
6.1 Records, Minimum Value, and Spendthrift Provision. 6
6.2 Disability and Receipt 6
6.3 Governing Law, Survival, and Perpetuities. 7
6.4 Captions. 7
7 Powers of the Trustee. 7
7.1 General Powers. 7
7.2 Specific Powers. 7
7.3 Delegation to Others. 8
7.4 Limitations on Discretionary Authority. 8
8 Certification of Grantor 8
9 Appendix. 9
9.1 Scholarships. 9
9.2 Lending. 10
9.3 Awards. 17
Funding:
I may fund this trust during my lifetime by transferring assets to the
trustee. The assets that fund this trust shall collectively be called the
“principal”. I or my agents may transfer assets at any time into the Trust.
These assets may generate income that is added to the Trust. These assets and
their retained, generated income together constitute the Trust Estate.
Use
of Income and Principal: Upon my demand, at any time and in any amounts, the
Trustee shall pay to me the income earned on the Trust Estate and any portion,
or all, of the principal of the Trust Estate.
Gifts:
If during my lifetime I want to donate assets to a charity from the Trust and
get a charitable deduction, then the Trustee shall confirm with the charity
that the receipt should be provided to my name and my personal tax id.
Upon
my death or incapacity, Pauline Rada shall serve as the trustee of this trust.
Determination
of Incapacity: I shall be considered incapacitated if the Trustee receives at
least two physicians’ statements showing that I am incapacitated and unable to
manage my financial affairs.
Recovery
from Incapacity. If I recover from my incapacity, then I shall be reinstated as
trustee. Verification of my recovery shall require written certification from
two physicians that I am competent and able to deal with the trust properly and
to exercise the rights and powers reserved hereunder in my best interests.
I
have been advised with respect to the differences between revocable and
irrevocable trusts and hereby declare that this Trust is revocable. I may at
any time revoke or amend this Trust, in its entirety or in part, without
notifying any beneficiary but by a signed writing, which shall be delivered to
all Trustees. This right of revocation or amendment may not be exercised by
any other person, including my attorney-in-fact or anyone else serving as a
fiduciary.
When
I die, this trust shall become irrevocable. It may not be amended or altered,
except as provided by this Trust. The Trust may be terminated only by the
distributions authorized by this Trust.
This
Trust will support the legacy of the Trustor as a researcher in artificial
intelligence and contribute to advances in science, engineering, and health
care as delineated in a separate Appendix which defines the class of possible
beneficiaries. The specific beneficiaries have not yet been identified. For
instance, the Trustee has the option to award scholarships for study or awards
for certain achievements, but no awardees have been yet identified.
After
my death, to the extent that Trustee is either requested in writing by the
executor or personal representative of my estate or required by a legal
obligation of the Trust, the Trustee shall pay its portion of the expenses as
next described. I expect to have multiple trusts transferred from Revocable to
Irrevocable status on my death. Expenses that arise from elsewhere, such as
expenses associated with disposing of my body after death, I expect to be
shared among my trusts in proportion to the Trust Estate value of each Trust.
Expenses that are particular to this Trust, such as taxes owed to the
government based on transactions specific to this Trust, shall be paid
exclusively by this Trust.
The
Trust may have ongoing expenses, such as for expenses incurred by the Trustee
in discharging Trustee duties. These expenses must be paid each year before the
value of the Fund for the year is determined and before the Beneficiaries get
anything.
Based
on my reading of the current tax rules, my impression is that the Trust will
pay taxes on any income which it receives but not on any interest or dividends
earned that year that go to the beneficiary that year. Since the Trust is
likely to give funds to entities or for purposes that the IRS would allow to be
considered tax deductible, such as giving money to a US state university for
the university to award scholarships, the Trustee should be attentive to such considerations.
No
beneficiary of any Trust (except the Trustor) shall have any right or power to
anticipate, pledge, assign, sell, transfer, alienate or encumber his or her
interest in the Trust, in any way. No interest in any Trust shall, in any
manner, be liable for or subject to the debts, liabilities or obligations of
such beneficiary or claims of any sort against such beneficiary.
Any
beneficiary of any Trust shall have the right to disclaim his or her interest
in said Trust. Said disclaimer may be affected in compliance with the
requirements of the laws of any jurisdiction in which any Trust may be
administered. Alternatively, the Trustee may act upon any written disclaimer of
any interest, in whole or in part, in any Trust. In the event any beneficiary
is incapacitated, the Trustee may accept the disclaimer of a legal or natural
guardian of said beneficiary.
Depending
on which approaches are chosen in the choice of beneficiaries, the Trustee may
either distribute only the income of the Trust for 15 years or may also choose
to dip into principal. At the beginning of the sixteenth year, the assets of
the Trust minus necessary expenses will pass in their entirety to the
Beneficiaries as specified by the Trustee and constrained by descriptions in
the Appendix.
I
want the Trust to invest in some combination of small cap, value stock and
long-term, high-quality bonds where the combination could be anywhere from all
of one and none of the other to half of each. The Trustee may decide. Further
details about these two options follow.
One
recommendation is to invest all the assets in value, small cap, equity ETFs or
index funds. The reason for this recommendation is that value, small-cap stock
have proven to have a higher rate of return than other stock categories.
Additionally, the Grantor recommends that the value, small cap, ETF or fund
have:
·
net assets exceeding
$1 billion,
·
no load fee on entry
or exit,
·
gross expense ratio
annually less than 1%.
I
suggest diversification both by geography and industry, but this could be
achieved by having one ETF that emphasizes one area and another that emphasizes
another. The small, value stock investing approach has shown in some
historical studies to provide a geometric mean return of 1.12. However, the
return may be much lower or higher in any given year.
If
one wants a return that is more predictable from year to year but with a
smaller geometric mean over the years, then bonds might be a better choice. If
the Trust invests exclusively in a fixed-rate, fixed term bond whose term
corresponds to the longevity of the Trust, then the beneficiaries might
anticipate a constant income from the Trust each year. Long-term, high
quality, fixed rate corporate US bonds in early 2023 are paying approximately a
5% annual, nominal return. If the Trust started with a cash value of $2.5 m,
then a 5% return would generate $125,000 per year.
During
my lifetime, I shall serve as trustee.
I
expect to have multiple revocable living trusts in effect. Expenses that arise
from elsewhere, such as expenses associated with my health care, I expect to be
shared among my various trusts in proportion to the Trust Estate value of each
Trust. Expenses that are particular to this Trust, such as taxes owed to the
government based on transactions specific to this Trust, shall be paid
exclusively by this Trust.
Given
the preceding proviso of sharing of costs among Trusts, If I am incapacitated,
the trustees shall use any amount of trust income or trust principal necessary
for my proper health care, support, maintenance, comfort and welfare. My
express desire is that the Trustee apply income liberally to maximize my remaining
quality-adjusted life years. Furthermore, I strongly prefer not to be
hospitalized or otherwise institutionalized because I desire as much freedom as
possible and my experience of being institutionalized is that my freedom is
abrogated. In other words, I wish that the Trustee use whatever expenses are
reasonable to accommodate my living freely in a home situation where I have
full authority over my behavior.
Alternate
Successor Trustee. If Pauline Rada, is unable or unwilling to serve as trustee,
then Ray Rada shall serve as trustee.
Alternate
Successor Trustee. In the event that my successor trustee, Ray Rada, is unable
or unwilling to serve as trustee, Rosa Rada shall serve as trustee.
Alternate
Successor Trustee. In the event that my successor trustee, Rosa Rada, is unable
or unwilling to serve as trustee, Roy A Rada shall serve as trustee.
Alternate Successor Trustee. In the event
that my successor trustee, Roy A Rada, is unable or unwilling to serve as
trustee, my former Ph.D. student Hayden Wimmer shall serve as trustee.
Alternate
Successor Trustee. In the event that my successor trustee, Hayden Wimmer, is
unable or unwilling to serve as trustee, my former Ph.D. student Jie Du shall
serve as trustee.
Alternate
Successor Trustee. In the event that my successor trustee, Jie Due, is unable
or unwilling to serve as trustee, my former Ph.D. student Hafedh Mili shall
serve as trustee.
Alternate
Successor Trustee. In the event that my successor trustee, Hafedh Mili, is
unable or unwilling to serve as trustee, my former Ph.D. student Chaomei Chen
shall serve as trustee.
If
Chaomei Chen is unable or unwilling to serve as trustee, then the last acting
Trustee should distribute the assets of the Trust to a university scholarship
fund where Roy Rada studied or worked on the condition that the university
shall give the scholarship in the name of Roy F Rada to students pursuing a
computer science or information systems degree.
If
none of the Trustees specifically named by the Trustor is willing to implement
the preceding, final, closing action, then the Trustee shall appoint a
successor trustee of an individual, a bank, or a trust company.
If
last acting Trustee fails to appoint a successor Trustee, then the Court shall
intervene and appoint Northern Trust as the Trustee, unless Northern Trust is
unwilling in which case the biggest competitor to Northern Trust that is
willing to accept the Trust will be appointed.
Co-Trustees:
The Trustee may request that someone join him or her as a Co-Trustee.
Decision-Making
when More Than One Trustee: When there is more than one Trustee at any one
time, a majority decision shall control. Where no majority decision can be
made, then the first Trustee whose name appears in the Trust Agreement shall
make the final decision.
The
trustee shall be entitled to reasonable compensation consistent with the laws
of the State of Florida. In addition, the Trustee shall be reimbursed for
reasonable expenses incurred by the Trustee in the administration of this
Trust.
Accounting:
The Trustee shall render an annual accounting, upon the termination of the
trust, and at any other times which the Trustee may deem necessary or
advisable. The written approval of the beneficiaries as to all matters and
transactions shown in the account, shall be final, binding and conclusive upon
all such persons, and upon all persons who may then be, or thereafter become,
entitled to any income or principal of this Trust. The written approval or
assent of the persons mentioned in this Section shall have the same force and
effect in discharging the Trustee as a decree by a court of competent
jurisdiction. However, any such written approval shall not enlarge or shift the
beneficial interest of any beneficiary.
Removal
of Trustee: I may, at any time, appoint and later remove any other trustee(s),
to act with me or in my place, by a signed writing. After my death, or if due
to my incapacity I am unable to remove the trustee, Pauline Rada shall have the
power to remove a trustee.
Liability
of Trustee: With respect to the exercise or non-exercise of discretionary
powers granted by this Declaration of Trust, the trustee shall not be liable
for actions taken in good faith. Such actions shall be binding on all persons
interested in the trust property.
Resignation
of Trustee: Any Trustee in office may resign at any time by signing a notice
of resignation. The Trustee shall be deliver his resignation to the person or
institution who is either named in this Trust or is appointed by the Trustee to
next serve as the Trustee The resigning Trustee shall, at the request of the
remaining or successor Trustee, promptly deliver such assignments, transfers,
and other instruments as may be reasonably required for fully vesting in such
remaining or successor Trustee all rights, title and interest in the Trust
Estate.
Bond:
This Trust requires no bond for a Trustee named in the Trust.
Deciding
Principal versus Income: The final decision of what’s principal and what’s
income rests with the Trustee, as the lines between principal and income
sometimes blur.
Accounts
and Records. During such time as I am not acting as Trustee, the Trustee shall
keep all records and accounts of the trusts created herein and annually or more
often render to the Beneficiary a statement showing in detail receipts,
disbursements and distributions from the Trust, and the market value of all
Trust assets.
Minimum
Value of Trust. If at any time the Trustee, in its discretion, shall determine
that it is not economically feasible to continue the administration of any Trust
created hereunder, the Trustee may, but need not, terminate such Trust and
distribute the Trust property proportionately to the persons then entitled to
receive the income from such trust.
Spendthrift
Provision. No beneficiary entitled to any form of future distribution from a
trust created hereunder, shall take or have any title in the Trust until the
same shall be received. Further, no disposition, charge or encumbrance by way
of anticipation by any beneficiary shall be of any validity or legal effect,
nor shall the future interest of such person be in any way liable for any claim
of a creditor, spouse, divorced spouse, or any other claimant to whom a
beneficiary may be in any way liable, nor shall it be subject to any legal
process or bankruptcy proceeding.
Disability.
A fiduciary or a beneficiary shall be deemed to be disabled if a licensed
physician certifies or, if required, a court having jurisdiction determines
that due to physical or mental conditions the person is unable to exercise
judgment about or attend to property or financial matters. The settlor desires
that, if requested, any fiduciary or successor fiduciary sign an authorization
under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act permitting any
fiduciary or named successor fiduciary to receive medical information necessary
to confirm his or her ability or inability to serve as a fiduciary.
Receipt
from a Beneficiary. Whenever payments are made to a minor or to a person who is
disabled as defined in this trust, the receipt of the person, the person’s
natural guardian, or the person’s legal representative shall exonerate the
trustee. The trustee need not see to the proper application of the
distribution.
Governing
Law. The Trust shall be governed and construed in all respects according to the
laws of the State of Florida. In the event any Trust or asset is being
administered in another state, this Trust may be regulated by the laws of such
state if needed to avoid excessive administrative expense, or to uphold the
validity of any of the terms of this Trust.
Survival.
Unless otherwise specified in this instrument, no person shall be considered to
have survived another or to be living upon the death of another if he or she
dies within 30 days after the death of the other person. Unless otherwise
specifically provided in this Agreement, a gift fails if a beneficiary does not
survive and there is no substitute beneficiary indicated in this Agreement who
satisfies the conditions for taking. Any person who is not identified as a
substitute beneficiary in this document shall not take under the provisions of
an anti-lapse statute.
Rule
Against Perpetuities. If this Trust Agreement shall violate any applicable
rule against perpetuities, accumulation or any similar rule or law, the Trustee
is hereby direct ed to terminate such trust on the date limited by such rule of
law, and thereupon the property held in the Trust affected by this Section,
shall be distributed to the persons then entitled to share the income from the
property in the proportions in which they are then entitled to share such
income.
Section
Numbers and Headings have been inserted for convenience only and such shall not
be construed to affect the interpretation of any provision of this Agreement or
to limit or broaden the terms of any provision.
The
trustee shall have the discretionary administrative power to deal with any
property held in the principal as freely as I might in the handling of my own
affairs, subject to the constraints that when this Trust becomes Irrevocable
after my death that the constraints on investing given elsewhere in this
document hold. Further, I hereby grant to the trustee all the powers conferred
by the laws of any state in which the trustee may act on behalf of the trust so
long as the Trustee does not violate intentions specific to this Trust.
Trustee
Decision is Final: The exercise by the Trustee of the discretionary powers
herein granted with respect to payment, distribution or application of
principal or income is final and conclusive. No Trustee shall be required to
obtain the approval of any court for any action of such Trustee unless approval
is required by law or by a specific requirement in this Trust Agreement.
Without
in any way limiting the generality of the foregoing, the trustee is hereby
granted the following specific powers in addition to and not in substitution
for powers previously conferred:
To
take possession, custody, or control of assets transferred to the trust, to
receive assets from fiduciaries or other sources that are acceptable to the
trustee, and to retain assets that trustee may receive, including assets in
which trustee is personally interested, in accordance with the prudent investor
rule of the State of Florida.
To
determine whether any money or property coming into its possession shall be
treated as principal or income, and to charge or apportion expenses, or losses
to principal or income as the trustee, in its sole discretion, may deem just
and equitable.
To
perform, compromise, or refuse the performance of the grantor’s contracts that
are obligations of the trust, as the trustee may determine under the
circumstances.
To
abandon an asset when, in the opinion of Trustee, it is valueless, is so
encumbered, or is in a condition that it is of no benefit to the trust.
To
make, revise, or revoke any available allocation, agreement, consent, or
election affecting any tax in conjunction with the settlor’s personal
representative, if any, that is appropriate in order to carry out the settlor’s
estate planning objectives and to reduce the overall burden of taxation, both
in the present and in the future. This authority includes the power to exclude
or include any assets from the gross estate for federal estate tax purposes,
value any assets for federal estate tax purposes, and pay taxes, assessments,
penalties, and interest and contest or sue for refunds of those payments.
To
have access to Grantor’s entire medical and medical billing record.
To
insure the assets of the trust against damage, loss, and liability and the
trustee against liability as to third persons.
To
engage and pay reasonable compensation to lawyers, accountants, consultants, or
other professionals for information and services relating to the trust.
Delegation
to Successor Trustee: Any Trustee may delegate any management function of any
Trust to any other Successor Trustee (even though the Successor Trustee is not
then serving as Trustee) upon such terms as may be agreed by the Trustees. In
the event more than one Trustee is serving, Trust assets may be held in the
name of one Trustee.
Delegation
to Support Staff: The Trustee may employ or retain accountants, agents, legal
counsel, investment advisers, and other experts as the Trustee shall deem
advisable. The Trustee may rely on the advice furnished and fix the
compensation of such persons.
Notwithstanding
anything in this Trust to the contrary, no single Trustee shall:
a)
Have the authority to
appoint income or principal of any trust formed under this Trust Agreement to
himself or herself, his or her creditors, his or her estate, creditors of his
or her estate; or to or for the benefit of any child to whom he or she owes a
legal obligation of support and for which such appointment of income or
principal would constitute a discharge of such legal obligation of support.
b)
Participate in any
decisions regarding the discretionary distribution of income or principal to
himself or herself, or to or for his or her benefit.
c)
In the event any
Trustee is in a position where such a decision would have to be made, such
Trustee shall not participate in such a decision and instead any co-Trustee
shall make such decision. Further, if there is no co-Trustee, then the next
named successor Trustee under this Trust Agreement who is willing and able to
participate shall so participate in such decision.
I
certify that I have read this Declaration of Trust and that it correctly states
the terms and conditions under which the trust property is to be held, managed
and disposed of by the trustee, and I approve the Declaration of Trust.
/s/
_______________________________
NAME,
Grantor and Trustee: Roy F Rada Dated: ____________________
/s/
_______________________________
NAME,
First Witness: _______________________________
/s/
_______________________________
NAME,
Second Witness: _______________________________
FLORIDA
NOTARY ACKNOWLEDGMENT
STATE
OF FLORIDA, COUNTY OF ________________________
The
foregoing instrument was acknowledged before me by means of ☐ physical presence or ☐ online notarization, this DATE
_______________ by Roy F Rada (name of person acknowledging).
(Seal)
________________________
Signature of Notary Public
Print, Type/Stamp Name of Notary
Personally
known: ________________
OR
Produced Identification: ______________
Type
of Identification Produced: ____________________
I
want to leave a legacy consistently with the vision of my life and want to
dedicate part of my life savings to that purpose. Since I have not yet enacted
enough of a plan to be comfortable that it will automatically prosper
autonomously after my death, I present next some alternatives that I have
explored and leave to my Trustee to choose among these alternatives what seems
most doable and impactful. This document begins with the simplest scheme
titled ‘Scholarships’. After that I go into detail about two plans titled
‘Lending’ and ‘Awards’.
Perhaps
the simplest thing to do but still allow me to get my name associated with my
cause in a long-term way is to give small scholarships to many people over many
years. Consider all the places where I studied or worked for more than one
year and make arrangement with as many of them as practical to establish a Roy
F Rada Scholarship for students pursuing work related to artificial
intelligence.
Some
places that fit the bill can be determined from my resume currently accessible
at userpages.umbc.edu/~rada which includes:
1) Ph.D. from University of
Illinois
2)
M.D.
from Baylor College of Medicine
3)
B.A.
from Yale University in Psychology
4)
Professor,
Department of Information Systems at the University of Maryland at Baltimore
County,
5)
Professor
of Software Engineering, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington.
6)
Professor
of Computer Science, University of Liverpool, England.
7)
Editor
of Index Medicus, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland.
8)
Assistant
Professor, Dept. Computer Science, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan.
I
add to that list two entries High School Degree: Bowie High School and Master’s
Degree: University of Houston in Computer Science.
I
would also like to add another two organizations to the mix which are the
Association of Computing Machinery in which I was actively involved for many
years and which awarded me an ACM Fellow. ACM gives scholarships for women in
computing, and I would be willing to have a named scholarship that was for
women in computing. I was active in the Healthcare Information and Management
Systems Society (HIMSS) much more briefly than in ACM but also respect that
organization. HIMSS has a foundation that accepts donations and gives grants.
My
list of institutions based on the preceding story is
I
have not approached these places to ask whether they would accept a donation
with the condition that it be used to create a named scholarship. However, in
my experience most such entities are happy to accept donations, even with
strings attached. NLM accepts a donation with strings attached according to
https://www.nlm.nih.gov/about/donations.html.
For
a place such as NLM, I would be amenable to changes in the target so that
instead of focusing on artificial intelligence the recipients of the
scholarship from NLM would want to engage in studies relevant to facilitating
the mission of NLM.
I’m
not looking to simply give one scholarship once but want the institution, such
as NLM or Yale, to create a fund from which earning would be used to support a
scholarship. Such a donation incurs cost to an institution and places like
Yale might take substantially off the top of the fund to manage the fund.
My
goal would be to maximize the visibility of my name as donating to this worth
cause. I know that some scholarships are very meager, such as $500 for one
semester support, while some are very generous, and provide full-tuition and
cost-of-living expenses for an entire degree program which at a place like Yale
could be $400,000 for one student for one degree. I’m not prepared to provide
the $400,000 kind of scholarship and would be closer to the $500 kind.
I
am sure enough of those organizations would want my money to be able to create
named scholarships from a fund that lasted in perpetuity or something close to
that. I am not clear however how much money each would require at a minimum to
create a named scholarship now what other conditions the institutions might
impose. I suggest doing some investigating online as to these questions. At
some point one might want to send emails to the organizations stating our
objectives and seeing how they respond.
Based
on the responses, I would want to maximize my impact by having scholarships at
the places which have the highest visibility and the greatest reputations,
which would be places like Yale, University of Illinois, National Library of
Medicine, and ACM but their restrictions and demands might also be the
greatest. The place of which I most fond personally is the University of
Liverpool in the sense of my having had the best years of my professional life
there, and in that sense I’d be most inclined to work with Liverpool, but in
the 27 years since I have left Liverpool, I have had no interaction with the
University of Liverpool and nobody there remembers me or cares about me. The
people with whom I still stay in touch are some of my PhD students who have
long since been working somewhere else.
My
former PhD students might also be good people to approach about collaborating
in creating named scholarships. Some might be happy to work in this direction
particularly when they got credit too, such as by creating a scholarship at
their current university which scholarship Is named for both me and my former
student. The names of my former students who seem most germane this to are
Hafedh Mili at UQAM, Mahmoud Mhashi at Univ Tarbuk, Chaomei Chen at Drexel, Jie
Due at Grand Valley State Univ. and Hayden Wimmer at Georgia Southern Univ.
Some
entities are focused exclusively on brokering between donors and students
seeking scholarships. For instance, scholarships.org solicits money from
donors who want to create a named scholarship. Scholarships.org then
advertises the scholarship, invites applicants, chooses a scholarship winner,
and awards and administers that student’s scholarship. That would be an easy
way to give money to an entity and have scholarships created but it seems to me
that a place like scholarships.org is less likely to survive or handle my money
responsibly than a long-lived university. Further investigation is merited.
Another
source to consider would be the Trust itself. Namely, the Trust could
advertise scholarships, accept applications, and so on.
Taxes
are another issue to consider. A donation to a non-profit educational
organization should allow a deduction from income of the Trust. Investigating
the details of that might be important. For instance, given that my Trust is
based in the US and if the IRS gives tax deductions only for contributions to
American organizations, then we might want less to donate to a place in a
foreign country. Otherwise, I’m in favor of foreign countries.
The
design presented in this document begins with a top-level tabular form that
shows input, process, and output columns for each of several hierarchically
related components. The entity doing the lending will be referred to as Meta.
The ensuing ‘Narrative’ describes in English those tables. The narrative
explains that Meta would attempt to make small loans or investments to people,
groups, or organizations that would agree to try to repay Meta and to become
part of a community of Meta awardees that would support one another. Since the
particulars of what loans or investments should be offered is unclear, Meta
expects to begin with a reverse auction approach where people seeking support
would specify what they wanted and their qualifications through answering
branching questionnaires online.
The
Design moves from tabular and narrative presentations to showing flowcharts
meant to be the next step before coding. Admittedly only the beginnings of
this flowcharting activity have been attempted to date. For instance, this
document gives a flowchart for the login operation but that is not unique to
Meta and is less important than many other parts of Meta that are not yet
detailed. The document is a preliminary draft.
The
Design section also shows sample questions that might be asked of applicants
and how the answers of those applicants would be evaluated. More generally,
the evaluation of Meta’s progress over time is described in a way that should
support automatic assessment and modification of Meta’s behavior. Most
crucially Meta must learn and grow.
To get a clearer picture of what Meta will do, a
prototype system would be helpful. The ‘Vision and Framework’ Section
specified some requirements for a prototype. The next step before code would
be a design. This Section begins with a tabular description of the design and
progresses through subsequent sub-sections to a flowchart.
The tabular description of Meta contains a
hierarchical decomposition of tables with the top-level table indicating the
role of money. Subsequent tables are labeled: basic maintenance, business,
and adaptability. Each table has three columns: input, process, and output.
|
Top Level
|
|
Input
|
Process
|
Output
|
|
Money.
|
|
Money.
|
|
Applications for money
|
|
Requirements on receivers
|
|
basic
maintenance
|
|
Input
|
Process
|
Output
|
|
Meta Money
|
specified in charter
|
Invest in small-cap value global stock
fund
|
|
Dividends from stock brokerage
|
stored in Meta bank
|
|
|
|
from Meta bank
|
Pay for computers
|
|
Government Requirements
|
specified in charter
|
File Taxes;
Maintain legal identity
|
|
Business
|
|
Input
|
Process
|
Output
|
|
Applications for loan or investment
|
|
Loans or investments to successful
applicants
|
|
Borrowers repay
|
into Meta bank
|
|
|
Borrowers comment on others
|
|
Community of borrowers
|
|
Adaptability
|
|
Input
|
Process
|
Output
|
|
Money.
Existing program for Meta.
|
Reproduction with change
|
Meta offspring
|
|
Assessment of previous results
|
Differentially weight existing
components.
|
|
The
world of Meta has multiple dimensions to include information, money, and
people. To get returns on information that Meta shares, it will ask its
partners to form a community that gives feedback to its members. To get
returns on money, Meta will make loans or investments.
What should be the attributes of Meta’s loans?
For instance, should the borrower get an interest free loan for 1 year made in
monthly installments of $500. Should the borrower at end of each month submit
a report on progress in a public place for comment?
Parameters of the loan itself
- Amount of
loan
- Duration
- Given at
once or regular payments in exchange for progress reports and feedback on
other people's progress reports.
- Interest
which could be zero or any other amount
- collateral: real estate second
lien, other collateral, or no collateral.
Since Meta does not know what would work and does
not have a vested interest in a particular detail, a reverse auction might be
appropriate. In a reverse auction, the buyer puts up a request for a required
good or service. Sellers then place bids for the amount they are willing to
receive for the good or service, and at the end of the auction the seller with
the lowest amount wins.
Meta could initially start with one site having
one set of starting conditions and see what, if anything, gets any bids. If a
successful format for getting a winning bid is achieved and over time the
awardee(s) succeed by Meta’s criteria, then Meta could generate another site
Meta2 that took a different but related approach and see how Meta2’s
performance compares to that of Meta.
One way to go into finer detail on the software
needed for Meta is to provide flowcharts that show how information or other
resources flow through Meta. The interaction with applicants and awardees
includes questionnaires that the users complete, and thus greater detail of how
Meta works is provided by illustrating those questionnaires.
This
flowchart would be augmented by workflow diagrams that indicated who did what
when.
In
the reverse auction, the applicant specifies who he is and what he wants. The
categories of questions may be grouped as who are you, what have you done, what
do you want, and what are you willing to do.
3)
The answers by applicants to the questionnaire
would be evaluated in an algorithmic fashion. The results of the algorithmic
ranking would be accessible to all applicants and applicants who want to
continue would be required to return to the system and give feedback on the
results of the evaluation.
9.2.2.3.3.1
Algorithmic Scoring
In
each of the four categories the maximum points possible summed over all answers
is as shown in the Table. For each applicant Meta adds together in each
category the points associated with their answers. By way of illustration, if
a category had three questions and each of those questions had multiple choice
answers, and the applicant chose the first option (worth 1 point) for each
question, then the applicant earned 4*1 = 4 points in that category.
|
Category
|
Max
|
Weight
|
|
who are you
|
2+2+4+4+5+5 = 22
|
1
|
|
what have you done
|
4+4+4+4 = 16
|
1
|
|
what do you want
|
3+2+3+2= 10
|
3
|
|
what are you willing to do
|
4+2+3+3+2 = 14
|
3
|
After
the numbers are scored by category, then Meta multiplies the number in each
category by the weight given in the table. Finally, Meta sums the weighted
totals by category to create one integer for the candidate. Based on the
design, Meta would be assuming that the candidates with the highest scores were
most deserving of an award.
9.2.2.3.3.2
Applicant-to-Applicant Feedback
The
candidates would be invited to review their scoring and the scoring of every
other applicant. Candidates would
- vote on
value of each individual question and to
- propose
- modifications
of existing questions,
- new
questions, and
- changes
to the weighting scheme
- vote on the worthiness of each
applicant, as the candidate wishes
9.2.2.3.3.3
Awards Made
Meta
would delete, edit, or add questions and modify its weighting scheme based on
the feedback. Meta would create a new ranking of applicants based on
- its
original assessment,
- a merger
of its own weighting scheme and candidates votes, and
- activity
of candidates in previous phase.
Then Meta would make
awards.
Meta would continuously monitor its overall
progress and attempt to improve itself. This monitoring would consider the
applicants’ progress over time, the activity at the Meta web site, interactions
among awardees, and profitability.
The
application would sketch a monthly timeline of objectives and ten monthly
deliverables that indicate progress towards its entity’s goal. If the
application is accepted, then each month the awardee would submit a progress
report. If Meta accepts the report as adequate proof of progress, then that
month’s payment is made, otherwise not.
Each
deliverable would come in the form of a document which the applicant is willing
to share with the public and which document demonstrates a contribution to
society or financial progress. An example of a contribution-to-society
deliverable would be a document published in that month which is cited on
scholar.google.com. Each deliverable would include the awardee as the author
of the document with affiliation given as the registered entity that applied.
Examples of financial progress could be a contract committing payment to the
entity or the release of a lien previously held against the entity. Since the
future is not known, the schedule of deliverables is not a commitment to those
specific deliverables, but each month the awardee would explain how progress
compared to the original objectives and to previous monthly reports.
The activity at the Meta website would be
monitored to determine when corrective action was needed and in what
direction. These attributes include:
- Number of
visits to the Meta site.
- Slope of
visits to site versus month. From one month to next month this slope is
simply # visits month k - # visits month k-1 and more generally slope
between any number j of months is (# visits month k - # visits month
k-j)/j. For Meta the more positive the slope, the better.
- Number of
applications received.
- Ratio of
applications/visits.
- Slope of
ratio of applications/visits
- Number of
applicants willing to take a loan. And ratio of loan/applications
- Number of
applicants willing to sell shares. And ratio of shares/applications.
Of
course, these attributers themselves are subject to change.
As
applicants are required to interact with one another, monitoring that
interaction is crucial to Meta’s being able to improve. Meta would monitor:
- How many
comments were made?
- How many
comments were expected based on previous commitments?
- Rate of
change in comments.
Applicants
would also provide feedback on Meta’s performance.
Meta
would monitor these monetary attributes:
- How much
money was given by Meta in the past month to awardees and what was rate of
change in money to awardees?
- How much
money was spent for everything but awards (and rate of change)?
- How much
money was earned from money invested with the stockbroker and rate of
change?
- How much
money was given to Meta by awardees as payment on loans and rate of
change?
- How much money from ownership of
shares and rate of change?
Meta would look at the assessment values that are
going differently from what Meta would like and modify parameters so that its
system might move in the desired direction. For instance, imagine that Meta
receives enough people who are willing to make comments and payoff a loan but
want more than $10,000, then to modify the questions to make them more useful,
Meta could change the initial question from
What
total amount do you expect?
1)
More
than $10,000
2)
From
$5,000 to $10,000
3)
From
$1,000 to $5,000
What
total amount do you expect?
1)
More
than $50,000
2)
From
$30,000 to $50,000
3)
From
$20,000 to $30,000
4)
From
$10,000 to $20,000
The
parameters are numeric ranges and given that our hope of enough people wanting
$5k but only getting >$10k, the heuristic is to extend the >$10k into
multiple options and drop the options that no one wanted.
If
Meta had enough money, then it could reproduce another system Meta2 that was
given money to start and had changes to its program. Eventually, if there
could be multiple descendants of Meta, they could reproduce with one another
and exploit heuristics used by nature, such as cross-over of homologous
chromosomes. In unicellular organisms, one reason reproduction occurs as a way
of growing rather than the cell getting larger is that the need to move
nutrients into the cell and excrete waste is limited by the surface area of the
cell. As the cell gets larger the volume increases much more quickly than the
surface area and moving matter into and from the cell cannot serve the needs of
the larger volume. While software systems, such as Meta, are different in many
ways from cells, analogies can be made. If users who come to Meta must explore
through many options, they may experience cognitive overload and leave. Thus,
producing many small Metas, each with a distinct purpose or style, might
facilitate attracting and maintaining an audience. For instance, Meta has the
option of offering awards, loans, or investments. These three offerings are
crucially enough different that they need different types of audiences to
succeed and rather than trying to guide different audience types through one
large Meta, Meta might do better to have 3 smaller offspring, one for awards,
one for loans, and one for investments.
This
design for a simple Meta would facilitate the writing of code for a prototype.
The expectation is that such an exercise would lead to a better appreciation of
the challenges. The challenges can be distinguished at the top level as those
which require human intervention and those which can be done by Meta in
software alone. The parts that require human intervention include those which
establish and maintain a) a brokerage and bank accounts for Meta and b) legal
and tax filings. These money and legal concerns contrast with purely
information concerns. The information concerns are what are being detailed in
this report. Developing the design with adaptability in mind shows the need
for adjustable parameters.
An
alternative to awarding scholarships or loans is to give awards for
achievement. This section on awards refers to the awarding entity as The
Entity (TE),
TE
will be instantiated as a website that is largely governed by its algorithm and
interactions with its constituents who may annually vote to change TE. TE will
give awards to people who are advancing the vision of TE.
Every
year the website will invite all award winners to participate in the governance
of TE. At this annual virtual event, the rules of TE will be open to
discussion and members may submit proposals for changes to the rules. Some
things will be straightforward, such as changing keywords used in the search to
identify relevant documents. Some things will be less straightforward, such
as changing the obligations of awardees. If a quorum of members is present and
most of those present vote in favor of a motion, then the motion is passed.
The intention is to build a community of affinity which takes pride in its
membership and wants to perpetuate TE.
TE will begin by focusing exclusively on awarding
rising stars in the relevant research areas as manifested by citations to
journal papers received by those stars. A citation database, such as Google
Scholar, will be searched with keywords relevant to the vision of TE and
retrieved articles will then be sorted by the frequency with which they have
been cited by other researchers. The rising stars will be invited to receive a
cash award and to participate online in the community of other awardees over years.
An
algorithm will be used to identify potential awardees. In the first phase, TE
will focus on awarding researchers based on citation patterns. However, this
is not meant to be the sole domain of TE. The expectation is that TE might
extend its operations over the years to include other measures of success.
After
rising-star researchers relevant to the interests of TE have been identified,
they will be contacted to invite them to receive a reward and to form a
community established at TE. The community members will hopefully find
intrinsic reward in being connected with their peers, but to facilitate
progress, cash awards will be offered. To facilitate that TE perpetuates
itself for decades, the community will operate on democratic principles and
each year may vote to change features of the system.
This
section addresses low-level details of how the determination of awardee status
based on journal paper citations might be pursued. Since a possible expansion
later of TE to address also patents is envisioned and that patent award process
would seem to be isomorphic to the process for journal paper citations, both
are described next.
TE
will search for publicly accessible documents that contain keywords deemed
relevant to TE which keywords by way of illustration might include ‘artificial
intelligence’, ‘evolution’, ‘gradualness’, ‘cybernetics’, ‘self-organizing’,
‘learning’, ‘computers’, ‘robotics’, and ‘natural language processing’.
Documents here refers to two classes of documents: journal papers published in
refereed journals and patents registered with a national patent office. For
each journal paper (patent) retrieved as potentially relevant, the frequency of
citation by other journal papers (patents) will be determined. For journal
papers this information comes readily from various publicly accessible
databases such as ‘Google Scholar’.
Once
frequently cited authors are determined, a further analysis will determine the
rate of change of citations for those authors. TE is not looking so much to
reward those who have long established themselves as senior members of their
profession, who are most likely rich in funds and followers, but rather is
looking to acknowledge the rising stars. Thus, after identifying those with
above average citation counts over all their publications, the algorithm will
do retrievals on time slices of the past and determine for those authors how
their citations are growing over time. Those with the greatest acceleration in
citations will be offered rewards.
Some
number (perhaps one hundred) of the ‘best’ authors will be contacted by email
based on their email addresses available from their publications. The contact
will invite them to come to the website to say whether they 1) agree that their
publications match the criteria of TE and 2) would accept a reward.
The original endowment will be invested in a
global, small-cap stock index, and net income from that investment will be
distributed to awardees. Other donors may also give funds to TE and then
determine the direction of TE.
The
seed money of TE will be invested. The initial intention is to put it all in a
global, small cap equity fund and keep it there forever. Annually when the
geometric mean of the annual returns of the fund over its history are greater
than 1, TE will pay-out some percentage (perhaps 85%) of its net income in
awards.
Each
awardee will receive only a small monetary sum in the initial life of TE,
though that might change through time, as everything else. If TE had an
endowment of ten million USD, generated a net income of 5% per year from
investing its endowment, and dispensed 85% of its net income each year, then
the annual distribution is 0.05 * 0.85 * 10**6 = 4.25*10**5 or $425,000.
If
100 people are offered awards each year, then the per person reward is only
$4,250. Furthermore, this reward will not be distributed in one lump sum in
the first year. Instead, the money will be distributed to each award winner in
parts over several years with the first award simply based on agreeing to
accept the award, but the subsequent year awards are contingent on the person
returning to TE website at least once during that year to make a constructive
comment on the work of another award winner (that other award winner must not
be a co-author of the commenter). Being an awardee confers on the author both
an opportunity and an obligation to continue to participate in the life of the
community by giving feedback to other authors and to governance of TE.
While
TE has been privately endowed by one individual initially, it will accept
donations, and any donors will have special rights. Those rights include
pre-eminently the opportunity to determine how their money will be used. If
the new donor’s intention is to simply further TE’s work as already defined,
then no further changes to TE operating procedure are required, except that the
amount of principal endowment will have increased and accordingly the net
income to distribute in awards should also proportionally increase. Any donors
will automatically earn the rights of an award winner to participate in the
governance of TE.
TE operates as a semi-automated, role-based,
work-flow management system. An organizational model will be developed that
identifies the functions of the public, funders, nominees, awardees, and any
roles mandated by external, government. Data flow, workflow, and
connections to external entities will be rigorously specified.
TE operates as a semi-automated, role-based,
work-flow management system. The roles are
·
General
Public: Members of the public can see everything in the system and can post
comments but have no official voting capacity or other responsibility.
·
Funders:
Funders have donated money to the system and can propose changes to the system
and vote on the nominees for awards.
·
Nominees:
Nominees have been listed as potential awardees and their comments on other
potential awardees or nominees carry special weight.
·
Awardees:
Awardees receive monetary awards after fulfilling certain requirements.
First, the awardee is notified of likely award and must acknowledge
publications relevance and willingness to accept reward. Part of award is
given in first year and rest of award is given in annual increments after
awardee makes constructive comment to other awardee(s).
·
Regulatory
Mandatory Roles: TE will aim to become a part of another entity that handles
the governmental regulatory requirements. In any case, TE needs to be prepared
to fulfill the responsibilities of filing forms with the government, to include
prominently forms to the taxing authority of the country or other political
entities that have jurisdiction over TE. Lawyers and accountants may be
needed.
External
Data Sources: TE will access various external data sources to fulfill its
mission. These sources, as everything with the system, may change over time,
but initially for journal citation data Google Scholar is considered a likely
source. Other citation data sources include Microsoft Academic and Web of
Science, but neither is freely available. A stock brokerage firm will be used
to hold the principal of TE.
A
data base search and analysis subsystem will collect citation data and process
it to determine nominees for awards.
The
communications subsystem will send emails to those initially selected as
awardees to invite them to visit the site, register, acknowledge and accept
their award. Emails will also be sent to awardees in subsequent years to
remind them of their opportunities.
A
workflow subsystem will manage the logging into the system of members other
than the General Public and will support those others in discharging their
responsibilities on the website.
The
plan outlined above is exceedingly ambitious and thus unlikely to succeed.
Many simpler plans are possible, and another alternative is to pitch the
ambitious plan and seek a partner to mute it or make it more likely to succeed.
Many
stripped-down versions of the ambitious plan can be imagined. One way to
simplify is to remove the automatic selection of winners and instead turn the
picking to some existing organization which is familiar with picking winners
and just add to their armamentarium by providing some funds for one of their
existing or a new award. Another approach is to make the automated selection
of a winner less complex and not require a community to develop.
The
Association of Computing Machinery is the world’s largest scientific and
educational computing society. Its dozens of journals branded “Transactions”
are some of the most influential in the computing world, and its dozens of
Special Interest Groups (SIGs) are key to its development of community. Both
ACM as the parent and each of its SIGs are fond of giving awards to members for
research, teaching, or service contributions. Some of the awards are
associated with monetary prizes but the key to the award’s significance is its
denotation of excellence in the community.
A
simplified plan would be to associate with a SIG for that SIG to award prize
not already given but consistent somehow with the vision of this estate plan.
Of the SIGs relevant to the topic of this Estate Plan, a few samples, not meant
to be exhaustive, includes:
·
SIGACT
- Special Interest Group on Algorithms & Computation Theory
·
SIGAI
- Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence
·
SIGBio
- Special Interest Group on Bioinformatics, Computational Biology
·
SIGEVO
- Special Interest Group on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation
·
SIGKDD
- Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining
·
SIGSIM
- Special Interest Group on Simulation
A
sample of the awards given by some of these SIGs follows:
·
SIGACT
gives awards of which 3 are associated with monetary prizes varying from $500
to $5,000 each. Most of the prizes are associated with a name, such as the
Knuth Prize for Outstanding Contributions to the Foundations of Computer
Science.
·
SIGAI
has 3 awards: the Annual Award for Excellence in Autonomous Agent Research
with a $1,000 prize. The Doctoral Dissertation Award which provides funds for
the student to attend the conference.
·
SIGEVO
has 3 awards: Best Dissertation Award given at the GECCO and awarding $1,000
to the doctoral candidate deemed to have the most meritorious work in the field
of evolutionary computing. The Outstanding Contribution Award which recognizes
distinctive contributions to the field of Evolutionary Computation when
evaluated over an extended period of at least 15 years and includes a $1,000
award.
One
might readily imagine that any SIG would gladly accept a monetary gift that
could be added to an existing award or for a new award. If the Estate Plan
put $25,000 into an annuity that was paying 4%, then it would generate $1,000
every year for 100 years. Thus, with a mere $25,000 the estate plan could
fund an award not dissimilar in size from others in the SIG universe. Probably
the ACM requires that the funding provides overhead to ACM. If that overhead
were 100% of the award amount so that a $1,000 award required a $2,000 annuity,
then this approach would still be eminently doable.
At
https://dl.acm.org/journals is a list of 63 serial
publications and the following 20 have been selected as harmonious with this
Estate Plan’s interest in new algorithmic, life forms.
1.
Collective
Intelligence
2.
Journal
of Data and Information Quality
3.
ACM
Journal on Emerging Technologies in Computing Systems
4.
ACM
Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems
5.
ACM
Transactions on Accessible Computing
6.
ACM
Transactions on Applied Perception
7.
IEEE/ACM
Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing
8.
IEEE/ACM
Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
9.
ACM
Transactions on Cyber-Physical Systems
10. ACM Transactions on
Embedded Computing Systems
11. ACM Transactions on
Evolutionary Learning and Optimization
12. ACM Transactions on
Human-Robot Interaction
13. ACM Transactions on
Interactive Intelligent Systems
14. ACM Transactions on
Intelligent Systems and Technology
15. ACM Transactions on
Knowledge Discovery from Data
16. ACM Transactions on
Design Automation of Electronic Systems
17. ACM Transactions on
Modeling and Computer Simulation
18. ACM Transactions on
Reconfigurable Technology and Systems
19. ACM Transactions on
Social Computing
20. ACM Transactions on the
Web
For
each journal in the list, the user can click on the journal name and be taken
to a fuller description of that journal which includes the 5 authors who have
been most cited. For each of those authors one can click on the author’s name
and get detailed bibliometrics, to include number papers published, number of
total citations, and list of my frequently cited papers. A web browser could
scan this information and select certain authors to be offered a reward based
on certain algorithmically specified criteria.
If
The Entity does not want to depend on human committees to choose award winners
but wants something much simpler than given in the grand design, then the
details of something simpler are next given. Say that the term for searching
the literature is “evolutionary computing”. Applying the search to Google
Scholar one learns quickly that Google Scholar does not support automatic
sorting by citation frequency. Instead with Google Scholar the user would need
to retrieve results and analyze them outside Google Scholar. With Microsoft
Academic, however, searching and then sort by citation frequency is a built-in
option open to users. This exercise immediately points to a broader issue of
the endless array of information resources and their multi-facetted characteristics
which are changing across time.