Allen W Hahn Lifetime Achievement in Veterinary Informatics Award

Call for Nominations

The Association for Veterinary Informatics extends an open invitation for nominations of award candidates. Anyone aware of a candidate deserving the award in light of its aim to recognize career achievements in informatics that impact veterinary medicine is encouraged to submit a nomination. All are encouraged to post the invitation with direct links to this site.

A successful nomination will include references, citations and/or hyperlinks to candidate contributions that justify the nomination in terms of the Rubric used by the Nominations Review Committee outlined below. The rubric specifies the dimensions of achievements that embody the aims of the award. It is meant as a guideline to compare the work of candidates. The committee has considerable flexibility in interpreting these rubric dimensions and will consider any novel or peculiar arguments and vote by majority whether to accept or reject the resulting effect on scores and rank. Persons nominating a candidate are encouraged to suggest in writing their unique interpretations of the rubric in regards to their candidate’s achievements as part of the nomination process if they feel it is warranted. Additional rubric or selection process details are available by request to the committee liaison.

Past recipients include Dr. Craig Carter of University of Kentucky Veterinary Diagnostic Lab and Dr. Jeff R. Wilcke of Virginia Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine.


Timeline for Award - 2021-2022

Nominations open: January 1, 2022.

Nominations close: March 15, 2022

Selected Candidate Notified: No later than June 1, 2022

Recipient honored in award ceremony at the 2022 Talbot Symposium


Process for Nomination

  1. Download the Nomination Form (.docx format), and enter all pertinent details for your nominee.
  2. Obtain a Curriculum Vitae for your nominee, along with any other references pertinent to the award.
  3. Submit your completed Nomination Form, Nominee CV, and any other supporting documents to alhahnaward@avinformatics.org by 6pm PST / 9pm EST March 15, 2022.

For more information contact: alhahnaward@avinformatics.org


Criteria for Selection – the Rubric

This rubric guides the committee in objectively and quantifiably ranking the lifetime achievements of candidates in areas of veterinary informatics considered important and unique to the field. It is not expected that any one candidate will merit a maximum score in all dimensions, but that excellence in multiple dimensions would bring an outstanding individual to the top of a rank order list. Dimensions are designed to prevent overlap, so that undo emphasis would not be placed on certain aspects. While point scales are provided (with examples), flexibility remains in interpreting scales and assigning points, so that the rubric can be adaptive and evolve with the field. In some cases, wording was selected to avoid restrictive interpretation. Unique talents and achievements may compel either a nominator or a committee member to present alternative interpretations of a dimension's scale to appropriately capture the impact or performance of the nominee. The committee should entertain the arguments presented and consider adoption of the alternative interpretation by majority vote either as an isolated exception or a perpetual enhancement to the rubric.


Rubric Dimensions:

    • Data Rendered Informative by personal efforts
      • Practical transformation of data that can be used to make decisions
    • Knowledge Transfer
      • Education of others in veterinary informatics
    • Adoption
      • Innovation used by others (commercialized, public domain or standard practice)
    • Exemplary of Informatics
      • Illustrates how informatics impacts the veterinary profession
    • Impact
      • Changes the way veterinarians practice or increases the application of veterinary informatics in practice
      • Changes fundamental ideas in veterinary information science
      • Successful in overcoming long standing obstacles to the growth and development of veterinary informatics as a field
    • Recognition through publication
      • Publication is important to the growth of the discipline, so recognition should be given to those attempting to expand this area of our field, especially with peer-reviewed or equally validated work
    • Learning
      • As a perpetual student of the discipline
    • Collaboration
      • Reflecting the diversity and scope of individuals and groups engaged by the candidate in cooperative projects and publications


Download the Rubric


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Dr. Allen W. Hahn


Dr. Hahn with his IT staff


Download Rubric 

Nomination Form


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