Publications
Book
Christopher R. Henke and Benjamin Sims, Repairing Infrastructures: The Maintenance of Materiality and Power. Under review, MIT Press Infrastructures series.
Articles and book chapters
Terece Turton, Divya Banesh, Trinity Overmyer, Benjamin Sims, and David Rogers, “Enabling Domain Expertise in Scientific Visualization with CinemaScience,” IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, forthcoming 2020.
Benjamin Sims, “Making Technological Timelines: Anticipatory Repair and Testing in High Performance Scientific Computing,” continent, Vol. 6, No. 1 (March 2017): 81-85. (link)
Benjamin Sims, “Seismic Shifts and Retrofits: Scale and Complexity in the Seismic Retrofit of California Bridges,” in Retrofitting Cities: Priorities, Governance and Experimentation, Mike Hodson and Simon Marvin, eds. (Routledge, 2016): 13-33. (link, manuscript)
Benjamin H. Sims, Nikolai Sinitsyn, and Stephan J. Eidenbenz, “Hierarchical and Matrix Structures in a Large Organizational Email Network: Visualization and Modeling Approaches,” in Social Network Analysis – Community Detection and Evolution, Rokia Missaoui and Idrissa Star, eds., Lecture Notes in Social Networks (Springer, 2014): 27-43. (link, manuscript)
Benjamin H. Sims, Nikolai Sinitsyn, and Stephan J. Eidenbenz, “Visualization and Modeling of Structural Features of a Large Organizational Email Network,” Proceedings of the 2013 IEEE/ASM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (August 2013): 787-791. (link, manuscript)
Benjamin Sims and Christopher R. Henke, “Repairing Credibility: Repositioning Nuclear Weapons Knowledge after the Cold War,” Social Studies of Science, Vol. 42, No. 3 (June 2012): 324-347. (link, manuscript) Winner of the David Edge Prize of the Society for Social Studies of Science (2015) and the Star-Nelkin Paper Award of the Science, Knowledge and Technology Section of the American Sociological Association (2013).
Benjamin Sims, “Resilience and Homeland Security,” in Limn Number One: Systemic Risk, Stephen J. Collier, Christopher M. Kelty, and Andrew Lakoff, eds. (2011): 6-8. (link)
Benjamin Sims, “Disoriented City: Infrastructure, Social Order, and the Police Response to Hurricane Katrina,” in Disrupted Cities: When Infrastructure Fails, Stephen Graham, ed. (Routledge, 2009): 41-53. (link, manuscript)
Benjamin Sims and Christopher Henke, “Maintenance and Transformation in the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex,” IEEE Technology & Society Magazine, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Fall 2008):32-38. (link)
Benjamin H. Sims, Andrew C. Koehler, and Gregory D. Wilson, “Expert Opinion in Reliability,” in Encyclopedia of Statistics in Quality and Reliability, Fabrizio Ruggeri, Ron Kenett, and Frederick W. Faltin, eds. (John Wiley and Sons, 2008). (link)
Benjamin Sims, “Things Fall Apart: Disasters, Infrastructure, and Risk,” Social Studies of Science, Vol. 37, No. 1 (February 2007): 93-95. Introduction to “Special Section: Comments on the Hurricane Katrina Disaster,” with comments by Wesley Shrum, Barbara L. Allen, Benjamin Sims, Jameson M. Wetmore, Chandra Mukerji, Christopher R. Henke, Wiebe E. Bijker, and Stephen Hilgartner. (link, pdf online, page linking to all comments)
Benjamin Sims, “‘The Day After the Hurricane’ : Infrastructure, Order, and the New Orleans Police Department’s Response to Hurricane Katrina,” Social Studies of Science, Vol. 37, No. 1 (February 2007): 111-118. (link, pdf online)
Benjamin Sims, “Safe Science: Material and Social Order in Laboratory Work,” Social Studies of Science, Vol. 35, No. 3 (June 2005): 333-366. (link, manuscript)
Benjamin Sims, “Concrete Practices: Testing in an Earthquake-Engineering Laboratory,” Social Studies of Science, Vol. 29, No. 4 (August 1999): 483-518. (link, manuscript)
Selected presentations
Benjamin Sims, Layers of Abstraction and the Organization of Repair in High Performance Computing, Society for Social Studies of Science Annual Meeting, August 2019.
Benjamin Sims, Repairing Codes: Infrastructural Friction in Scientific Computing, International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics, July 2016.
Benjamin Sims, Between Science and Hardware: Supercomputing Codes and Sociotechnical Repair, Society for Social Studies of Science Annual Meeting, November 2015.
Benjamin Sims, Cyber Security: A Sociotechnical Systems Perspective, International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics, July 2015.
Christopher Henke and Benjamin Sims, Maintaining Infrastructures: A Theory of Infrastructural Repair, Society for Social Studies of Science Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA, October 2013.
Benjamin Sims, Infrastructure, Social Order, and Community Resilience: A Socio-Technical Perspective, International Research Committee on Disasters Meeting, Broomfield, CO, July 2010.
Benjamin Sims, The Social Impact of Infrastructure Destruction: Social Order, Sociotechnical Systems, and Layered Indicators. Exploratory Simulation Technologies Group, Sandia National Laboratory, January 2010. (slides)
Benjamin Sims, A Sociotechnical Framework for Infrastructure Analysis: Capturing Scale and Complexity. Science Studies Research Group, Department of Science and Technology Studies, Cornell University, September 2009. (slides)
Benjamin Sims, A Sociotechnical Framework for Understanding Infrastructure Breakdown and Repair. Society for Social Studies of Science Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, October 2009. (paper)
Benjamin Sims, Revisiting the Uninvention Hypothesis: A Transactional View of Tacit Knowledge in Nuclear Weapons Design. Society for Social Studies of Science Annual Meeting, Montreal, Canada, October 2007. (paper)
Benjamin Sims, The Eternal and the Ephemeral: Bridges, Disposable Diapers, and the Limits of Technological Change. Society for the History of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, October 2003. (presentation notes)
Patent
Cornelia Verspoor, Benjamin Sims, John Ambrosiano, and Timothy Cleland, System and Method for Knowledge Based Matching of Users in a Network. U.S. Patent Number 7,933,856 B2, April 26, 2011. (link)
Dissertation
On Shifting Ground: Earthquakes, Retrofit and Engineering Culture in California. Examines the history and organizational context of the seismic retrofit program at the California Department of Transportation (“Caltrans”), an effort to reinforce older freeway structures throughout the state to current seismic safety standards. In particular, focuses on how earthquake risks are understood in public and political contexts, how engineers assess the difficult-to-define risks posed to structures by earthquakes, and how these risk assessments enter into the design process. Also examines peer review in engineering and how Caltrans engineers and managers coped with rapid changes in their knowledge base. Based on archival and ethnographic research and interviews carried out at Caltrans, university research laboratories, and engineering firms. (pdf)