The book Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende’s Chile written, by Eden Medina, associate professor at Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing, was awarded the Computer History Museum Prize and the Society for the History of Technology’s Edelstein Prize. Both recognize the author’s exhaustive research, historical analysis and clear, compelling writing style.

Medina wrote Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende’s Chile to tell the story of the early computer network designed to regulate Chile’s economic transition to socialism under the 1970-73 rule of President Salvador Allende. Interweaving the histories of technology and politics of a particular time and place through the in-depth case study of Chile’s Project Cybersyn, Medina recounts how computers have been used to bring about social and economic change.

She is the recipient of a New Directions Fellowship from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The $299,900 award will allow Medina to attend law school for the 2013-14 academic year to study the intersection between information technology and human rights. Medina’s research focuses on the relationship of technological innovation and political innovation and how political values can shape the design of computer systems.

Medina earned a BSE in electrical engineering from Princeton in 1997 and a Ph.D. in 2005 from MIT in the history and social study of science and technology.