Kai's paper in Information Systems Research titled “Content Growth and Attention Contagion in Information Networks: Addressing Information Poverty on Wikipedia” with co-authors Dylan Walker and Lev Muchnik was one of two papers awarded the inaugural Wikimedia Foundation Research Award of the Year. The winners were chosen from a competitive pool of more than 200 research papers.



Professor Zhu’s paper was recognized as having a significant impact on the work of many organized groups within the Wikimedia ecosystem in addressing Wikimedia's knowledge gaps. The award was presented by Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, who himself has read the paper and made his own comments on the research.



The Wikimedia Foundation Research team established the Wikimedia Foundation Research Award of the Year in 2021 to recognize recent research that has the potential to have significant impact on the Wikimedia projects or research in this space.