WORLD DATA SYSTEM - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Committee
- Researcher
Alfredo Tolmasquim is a Full Researcher at the Museum of Astronomy and Related Sciences and Director of Scientific Development of Museum of Tomorrow, both in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He was Director for 8 years of the Museum of Astronomy, Head of Department of Teaching and Research of the Brazilian Institute of Information on Science and Technology, and a member of the National Council of Archives and National Council of Cultural Policy. Tolmasquim is visiting scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, in Berlin. He was the creator of the Brazilian Bibliography of History of Science and adviser of the World History of Science On-line Project.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Committee
- Data Manager at the UK Polar Data Center
Alice Frémand is a geophysics data manager at the UK Polar Data Center. She is responsible for the management, publication, archiving and distribution of geophysics data (bathymetry and aerogeophysics) collected in Antarctic and Arctic polar regions. She obtained her degree in Geophysics Engineering in 2015 from the School and Observatory of Earth Sciences (University of Strasbourg, France).
Ariel Troisi is one of the two Co-chairs of IODE. In this capacity, he has an excellent knowledge of current oceanographic data and information management and exchange arrangements at the international level. In addition, he is Director of the Argentinian National Oceanographic Data Centre, and thus provides a national perspective on both data exchange and user needs, and how these are addressed.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Committee
- Executive Director, User Engagement at Ocean Networks Canada ( ONC )
Job Titles:
- Chairman
- Professor of Geophysics at the Institute
Bernard Minster is a Professor of Geophysics at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. A civil engineer from the Ecole des Mines de Paris, and a petroleum engineer from the Institut Français du Pétrole (1969), he obtained a Ph.D. in Geophysics from the California Institute of Technology (1974) and a doctorate in Physical Sciences from the Université de Paris VII (1974).
Prof. Minster's research interests are centred on seismotectonics, large-scale numerical modelling of earthquakes, and the use of space-based active remote sensing techniques to study the Earth. He is also interested in global data exchange problems.
Prof. Minster has chaired various National Research Council (NRC) committees. He chaired the NRC study on Scientific Accomplishments of Earth Observations from Space, and currently chairs the NRC study on Precise Geodetic Infrastructure. He currently serves as Chair of the WDS-SC, as well as on the Earth Science Subcommittee of the NASA Advisory Committee.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Committee
- Member of Committee
Job Titles:
- Founding Director of the Institute
- Principal at the Centre for Ethical, Soci
Dr. Claudia Emerson is the founding Director of the Institute on Ethics & Policy for Innovation at McMaster University, and Associate Professor of Philosophy. Her work in applied ethics considers ethical issues and policy gaps in global health research, and she has been working with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and its partners for over a decade examining issues that arise along the discovery-to-delivery pathway for potential lifesaving interventions. She is especially interested in ethical issues related to data sharing and models of data governance, particularly with respect to the introduction and adoption of novel technologies, and the management of infectious disease.
Dr. Emerson serves in several advisory capacities related to public health and innovation, including the national Advisory Committee on Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues for the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH) Expert Working Group on Field Testing of Modified Mosquitoes Driving Transgenes, and the Legal, Ethical, Environmental, Dual-Use and Responsible Innovation (LEEDR) panel of the Safe Genes Program for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). She holds an Hons B.Sc. in Biomedical Science, and M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy.
Claudia Emerson is Principal at the Centre for Ethical, Social, and Cultural Risk (CESCR) and Scientist in the Centre for Research on Inner City Health (CRICH) in the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael's Hospital, Toronto, and is appointed Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at McMaster University, Canada.
Dr. Emerson specializes in the ethics and policy of research involving human subjects. Since 2006, she has been a core investigator and senior advisor with CESCR (formerly the Ethical, Social, and Cultural (ESC) Program for Global Health) funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where she provides ethics consultation across the Global Health and Global Development programs of the Foundation. Her research is primarily focused on developing governance models to facilitate data access in global health for data driven decision-making, and she led the development of the Gates Foundation Global Health Data Access Principles and Grand Challenges Canada Data Sharing Policy. She is also active in public health ethics research and has written on the moral case for polio eradication, the eradication investment case for neglected infectious diseases, and the ethics of tracking technologies to improve immunization coverage in low and middle income countries.
Dr. Emerson serves in several advisory capacities related to public health activities, including the National Ethics Committee for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging, the Ethics Advisory Committee of the Ontario Health Study, the largest community-based longitudinal cohort study in Canada, the Data Standards and Integration Working Group for the Critical Path to TB Regimens initiative, and the Taskforce Methodology Group for the Eradication Investment Cases (EIC) for Onchocerciasis, Lymphatic Filariasis, and Human African Trypanosomiasis. She has advised the World Health Organization (WHO), and currently serves on the Scientific Committee of the International Council for Science -World Data System (ICSU-WDS).
Dr. Emerson holds a B.Sc. in Biomedical Science (Biochemistry) and M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy (Bioethics).
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Committee
- Vice - Chair of the Scientific Committee
- Member of Committee
- Professor of Computer Science at the Institute of Computing
Claudia Maria Bauzer Medeiros is a full professor of Computer Science at the Institute of Computing, University of Campinas (Unicamp), Brazil. She has received Brazilian and international awards for excellence in research, in teaching, and work in fostering the participation of women in computing. She is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences.
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Scientific Committee
- Member of Committee
- Professor
David Castle is a Professor in the School of Public Administration and the Gustavson School of Business at the University of Victoria. He recently served as Vice-President, Research at UVic, and was previously the Director of the Innogen Institute at the University of Edinburgh.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Committee
David J. Patterson is a taxonomist turned biodiversity informatician with interests in the diversity of protozoa, the evolution of protists, and embedding taxonomic practices in the management of on-line biodiversity information. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Bristol, Bristol, UK in 1976 and his D.Sc. from Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK in 1990. He has held appointments at Bristol University (UK), University of Sydney (Australia), Brown University (Rhode Island), Arizona State University, and the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. He led the implementation team for the Encyclopedia of Life project, and continues to work with the Global Names team in developing innovative taxonomically intelligent web-based management systems for biodiversity resources. He has been awarded the Thomas Henry Huxley prize and the Scientific Medal of the Zoological Society of London; has been President of the British Section of the Society of Protozoologists; President of the International Society for Evolutionary Protistology; and Vice-President of the (International) Society of Protozoology. He has been a member of the International Commission for Zoological Nomenclature and of the steering committee of the International Union of Biological Sciences (IUBS). He currently manages the 'Unifying Biology through Informatics' programme of IUBS. He has published approximately 190 peer-reviewed papers and several books throughout his career and is currently based in Australia as an Emeritus Professor at the University of Sydney.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Committee
- Member of the Independent Science Panel of the CGIAR Research Program
- Research Director at Institute of Research
Research Director at Institute of Research for Development (IRD) and Laboratoire d'Etude des Transferts en Hydrologie et Environnement (LTHE), University of Grenoble-Alpes, France. Laboratoire de Physique de l'Atmophère et Mécanique des fluides, Université Félix Houphouet Boigny, Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire
Dr Arona Diedhiou contributed to the coordination and to the implementation of the African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analyses (AMMA) International Programme as member of its International Executive Committee between 2003 and 2007. He also contributed to the involvement of African scientists, Regional Centres and National Meteorological and Hydrological Services. Thanks to this international coordination, AMMA built a multi-scale multidisciplinary database used across the world and mirrored in Africa. Between 2007 and 2012, he was the leader of the RIPIECSA programme (3.5 Million Euros from French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development) to fund research projects on climate, environment, and society interactions in West and Central Africa. Since 2013 and until 2016, he is co-investigator (based in France) of the International Project on Hydro-meteorological Risks in African Cities (RHYVA) and since 2015, co-investigator of the AMMA-2050 project: a UK/NERC-DFID joint initiative on 'Future Climate for Africa'.
Arona Diedhiou serves as a member of the Independent Science Panel of the CGIAR Research Program on 'Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security' and as member of the Scientific Committee of the West African Science Service Center on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use programme (WASCAL), an initiative of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. He advocates for the strengthening of the observing systems and for the sharing of the knowledge (publications and data) with scientific colleagues of developing countries.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Committee
- Scientist
Dr Lianchong Zhang is a young Earth observation scientist working at the Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences. As the deputy director of National Earth Observation Data Center (NODA), Dr Zhang has designed a framework to implement Earth observation data applications in the age of cloud services. He is also a major leader in ChinaGEOSS Data Sharing Network and making a constant effort to promote Earth observation data Chinese Earth Observation Analysis Ready Data (ARD) are open access to the public.
Job Titles:
- Professor of RADI at the Chinese Academy
Dr. Guoqing Li is a Professor of RADI at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He has worked at ESA and Purdue University as a visiting professor. He has been the Head of the Data Technology Division in RADI since 2007. His favourite research areas concern high-performance remote-sensing image-processing technology and the spatial information grid. His main focus is currently on next-generation spatial data infrastructure and nature disaster data management and infrastructure. He is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the China Computer Federation. He has also been involved in the national committees of ICSU's Committee on Data for Science and Technology and Integrated Research on Disaster Risk programme.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Committee
- Department of Integrated Water Systems and Governance, IHE - Delft Institute for Water Education, Delft, the Netherlands
- Member of Committee
- Member of the International Association for Hydro - Environmental Engineering
Dr. Ioana Popescu holds a PhD in Computational Hydraulics and has worked in the field of hydroinformatics for the past 31 years. She is Associate Professor of Hydroinformatics at IHE Delft -Institute for Water Education in Delft, The Netherlands. Her research focuses on computational methods, flood modelling and flood related vulnerability, lakes and reservoir modelling, river systems modelling and optimisation. Ioana has been involved in several large European collaborative research projects related to the field of ICT and water management (IceWater, lenvis,EnviroGRIDS, Floodsite, SCENT). These projects involve various partners both from academia and industry. Lately, her research is also focused on incorporating data generated by citizen observatories in flood models. This aims at better flood prediction and flood risks management. Furthermore, she is involved in educational and capacity development projects carried out with academic and research partners from Asia, Africa and Latin America. These projects are related to development and application of modelling systems for water related domains.
Ioana is an active member of the International Association for Hydro-Environmental Engineering and Research (IAHR), currently being a member of the IAHR Council.
Job Titles:
- Deputy Director of the British Oceanographic Data Centre
- Director of PSMSL
Dr. Lesley Rickards, Deputy Director of the British Oceanographic Data Centre, has over 25 years of experience in marine data management. Following on from her role as the UK National Coordinator for Marine Environmental Data, she has worked with others to set up the UK Marine Environmental Data and Information Network. She has also been involved in a number of EU-funded data management projects (currently, this includes SeaDataNet, Humboldt, ECOOP, EuroArgo, and MyOcean) and is a member of the European Commission's Marine Observation and Data Expert Group.
She has recently completed two terms as Chair of the International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE) of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO, and has represented IODE on the Joint IOC/World Meteorological Organization Technical Commission for Oceanography and Marine Meteorology (JCOMM) Management Committee. She has also been a member of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) Study Group on Management of Integrated Data and for many years chaired its predecessor, the ICES Working Group on Marine Data Management.
Lesley was appointed Director of PSMSL in April 2007. PSMSL is the international mean sea-level data bank, whose prime objective is the acquisition, analysis, and distribution of sea-level data. For many years, she has been a member of the IOC/JCOMM Group of Experts on the Global Sea Level Observing System. During the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE), she managed the WOCE 'Delayed-mode' Sea Level Data Assembly Centre, and in recent years, has been a member of the Governing Board of the European Sea Level Service.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Committee
- Professor and Director of the Institute for Risk Analyses
Elaine Faustman is Professor and Director of the Institute for Risk Analyses and Risk Communication at the University of Washington, School of Public Health. She obtained her PhD from Michigan State University in Pharmacology and Toxicology. She has directed the NSF-NIH Oceans and Human Health Center at the University of Washington for over a decade and is currently directing the NIH Children's Environmental Health Risks Center.
Her research activities include developing ontologies for environmental risks and ensuring interoperability for health databases. She is developing quantitative cross-disciplinary systems biology models for evaluating the impacts of environment on health. She is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Society of Risk Analysis. She has recently served on the US EPA Science Advisory board. She has also served as chair for the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Developmental Toxicology and as a member for the Committee on Toxicology and Institute of Medicine Upper Reference Levels for Nutrients. In 2012 she was a member of the ISC Review Committee on CODATA. She is the past Secretary-General for the International Union of Toxicology and continues to be active with this Union.
Job Titles:
- Director of WDS Regular Member: CDS
Françoise Genova has spent most of her career at the French National Centre for Scientific Research. From 1990 to 1993, she was in charge of space astronomy experiments at the French space agency, the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales. She then joined Strasbourg Astronomical Observatory, and became the Director of CDS in 1995. Created in 1972, CDS provides the international astronomical community with widely used, value-added reference services. Françoise managed the data centre's transition to the Internet era, and has been one of the pioneers of the so-called international astronomical Virtual Observatory (VO), which aims at providing seamless access to the wealth of online astronomical resources. She has coordinated or participated in several projects funded by the European Commission to set up the European Virtual Observatory, Euro-VO, which is the European implementation of this idea. She is also Chair of the French VO Scientific Council, and an active participant in the International VO Alliance (IVOA), an alliance of all VO projects around the world that, in particular, coordinates the definition of disciplinary interoperability standards. She is President of Division XII (Union-wide activities) of the International astronomical Union (2009-2012).
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Committee
- Ex Officio
Job Titles:
- Vice - Chair of the Scientific Committee
- Member of Committee
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Committee
- Vice - Chair
- Vice - Chair of the Scientific Committee
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Committee
- Member of the Executive Committee of the International Permafrost Association
- Science Officer of the World Glacier Monitoring Service
Isabelle Gärtner-Roer is Science Officer of the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS), Senior Researcher in the Glaciology and Geomorphodynamics Group, and Coordinator of the Zurich Graduate School in Geography at the Department of Geography at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. She is internationally known for her work on rockglacier kinematics and the sensitivity of high mountain environments, with focus on glaciers and permafrost. Her work is documented in several scientific articles, keynote lectures and media reports worldwide.
Since summer 2016 Gärtner-Roer is member of the Executive Committee of the International Permafrost Association (IPA), which aims to foster the dissemination of knowledge concerning permafrost and to promote cooperation among persons and national or international organizations engaged in scientific investigation and engineering work on permafrost. In addition she is an active member of the PERMOS (Permafrost Monitoring in Switzerland) and the Swiss Geomorphological Society (SCNAT). As officer of the World Glacier Monitoring Service she is managing activities of the Global Terrestrial Network for Glaciers (GTN-G), in the framework for the internationally coordinated monitoring of glaciers and ice caps in support of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In this context, she brings a lot of experience with large datasets as well as with providing access to the standardized data formats. She serves on the Scientific Committee of the International Council for Science -World Data System since early 2016.
Job Titles:
- Professor of E - Research at the University of Queensland
Jane Hunter is Professor of e-Research at the University of Queensland and Director of the e-Research Group in the School of ITEE. She is also Deputy-chair of the Australian Academy of Science's NCDS and Vice-president of the Executive Committee of the Australasian Association for Digital Humanities. She has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge, and has published over 100 papers in the fields of scientific data management, e-Science, data interoperability, and the Semantic Web. She is currently the Chief Investigator on a wide range of projects (that include biomedical sciences, environmental sciences, and materials sciences) in which she is leading the development of software services for managing, analyzing, and visualizing large-scale scientific datasets.
Job Titles:
- Director of WDS Regular Member: AADC
- Manager of the Australian Antarctic Data Centre
Kim Finney is the Manager of the Australian Antarctic Data Centre and current Chief Officer of the SCAR Standing Committee on Antarctic Data Management (SC-ADM). She has over 20 years experience in applying information management technologies to both small and large-scale scientific data management problems. In 2007 she served on the Prime Minster's Science, Engineering and Innovation Council Expert Working Group that developed a national strategy for managing data in science. In the same year she was also appointed to the International Council for Science (ICSU) ad-hoc Strategic Committee for Information and Data (SCID), which was charged with recommending future directions for ICSU's activities in relation to scientific information and data. She is also a member of the Australian Academy of Science, National Committee For Data in Science (NCDS). In 2004 Ms Finney was instrumental in establishing an Australian Ocean Data Centre Joint Facility (AODC JF), a consortium of 6 federal government agencies (i.e. Defence, Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO, Australian Institute of Marine Science, Geoscience Australia and the Australian Antarctic Division). The AODC JF is working towards establishing a virtual national marine data centre. She is a member of the AODC JF Board and in 2005 was responsible for gaining funding for an AODC JF spin-off entity called BlueNet.
BlueNet, in conjunction with Australian universities is developing technologies for large-scale data sharing and data integration. Between 2001 and 2004 Ms Finney worked as the Chief Information Officer for the federal executive agency, the National Oceans Office and prior to that managed the CSIRO Marine Division's Data Centre and computing support for the National Research Facility - RV Franklin. She holds B.Sc and M.Sc degrees from Sydney and Macquarie Universities respectively and has a post graduate diploma in Environmental Studies. She is also currently studying for her doctorate in the field of semantic technologies at the University of Tasmania.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Committee
- Member of Committee
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Committee
- Member of Committee
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Committee
- Member of Committee
Marc Nyssen studied Electrical Engineering at the Free University Brussels (VUB), graduating in Electronics in 1975. In 1978, he obtained an Engineering degree in Computer Science, and in 1983, obtained a PhD. degree in Electrical Engineering. From 1978 to 1983, he was appointed in the Medical Informatics Department, responsible for the research network and server computing infrastructure of the new medical campus of VUB in Jette. First as a research assistant, from 1983 then as Associate Professor, finally as Professor. He is currently Professor Emeritus of Medical Informatics (Department of Public Health).
Marc's interests lie in different aspects of the computerized production lines, mainly for the scientist, with emphasis on network communication aspects. Image processing related hardware and software systems were studied and realized under his guidance, as research projects or as thesis for students in Engineering or Biomedical Engineering and Medical Research. Medical Internet applications are a second field of interest and expertise, this field is now known as "E-health". Several projects were accomplished regarding the introduction of electronic medical records, physiotherapy registers and the exchange of medical data via the Internet, currently his main project consists of the introduction of electronic medical prescriptions for ambulatory care in Belgium: the Recip-e project, as project leader. He is also founder of the ICT4D group at VUB.
As National Secretary, he represents Belgium in the International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering and Computing (IFMBE), of which he is a board member and officer. His is also co-founder and Secretary General of the Belgian National Committee on Biomedical Engineering within the Belgian Royal Academy of Sciences and Fine Arts.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Committee
- Member of Committee
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Committee
- Member of Committee
Job Titles:
- Director of WDS Regular Member: PANGAEA
Michael Diepenbroek studied Computer Science at the Technical University of Berlin, before obtaining a Ph.D. in Geology from the Free University of Berlin. His geological research fields included sediment transport processes, statistics, and image analysis of sediment particles. He worked at the computer centre of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven. He conceptualized and implemented the scientific information system Publishing Network for Geological and Environmental Data (PANGAEA). Until 2001, he was Managing Director of the ICSU World Data Centre (WDC) for Marine Environmental Sciences. Since 2011, he has been coordinator of PANGAEA.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Committee
- Director of WDS Regular Member: International Service of Geomagnetic Indices [ISGI
Prof Aude Chambodut got her Ph.D. in Internal Geophysics-specializing in Geomagnetism-from the Institut de Physique du Globe Paris (IPGP) in 2004. For two years, she was associate-researcher successively at Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Potsdam and Helmholtz Centre Potsdam - GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Germany. Since 2006, she works at the Ecole et Observatoire des Sciences de la Terre (EOST), Strasbourg, France, as researcher in the Global Geodynamic Laboratory of Institut de Physique du Globe de Strasbourg (IPGS) and as lecturer in Geomagnetism at the University of Strasbourg (UDS) and at the School for Engineers in Geophysics (EOST).
In 2010, she became director of the Department of Magnetic Observatories of French Austral and Antarctic territories. She is involved in pure and technology researches in the frame of geomagnetism and environmental geophysics. Her research activities focus on geomagnetic field modelling, geomagnetic indices and Sun-Earth relationship. Since 2014, Aude Chambodut is Director of the International Service of Geomagnetic Indices (ISGI), which is in charge of the elaboration and dissemination of geomagnetic indices, and of lists of remarkable magnetic events, based on the report of magnetic observatories distributed all over the planet., with the help of ISGI Collaborating Institutes.
Job Titles:
- Director of WDS Network Member: International GNSS Service
- Vice - Chair of the Global Geodetic Observing System
Ruth Neilan serves as the Vice-chair of the Global Geodetic Observing System (GGOS). GGOS collectively provides fundamental geodetic observables and their variations to ensure long-term, precise monitoring as the basis to maintaining the stable, accurate, global reference frame that is crucial for all Earth observations and many practical applications.
Since 1993, she has served as the Director of the Central Bureau of IGS, formerly the International GPS Service. This bureau is responsible for the executive management and coordination of IGS, an organization committed to providing the highest quality data and products as the standard for GNSS in support of Earth science research, multidisciplinary applications, and education.
Job Titles:
- Professor at the Center for Spatial Information Science
Ryosuke Shibasaki is a Professor at the Center for Spatial Information Science (1998-present; Director 2005-2010), the University of Tokyo. His research interests cover moving object tracking with sensors, human behaviour understanding and modelling, analysis of mobile telephone data, semantic data interoperability and integration, and data assimilation of discrete objects.
He obtained a Ph.D. in remote sensing/Geographic Information Systems (GIS) from the University of Tokyo in 1986. His previous work experience includes Associate Professorships at the Department of Civil Engineering (1988-1991) and the Institute of Industrial Science (1991-98), the University of Tokyo. He was a former President of both the Asian GIS Association and GIS Association of Japan. In addition to being a member of the WDS-SC, he is currently a Board member of the Japanese Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, and Infrastructure Implementation Board of GEO.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Committee
- Applications Coordinator for the NASA Ice, Cloud
Sabrina Delgado Arias, applications coordinator for the NASA Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) mission, studied agriculture and resource economics and science & technology policy. Before coming to NASA she worked on model development focusing on agricultural production and land use change. At Goddard, she engages with user communities interested in exploring the utility and societal value of ICESat-2 data. Learning about the innovative ways in which scientists and data users propose to use ICESat-2 observations strengthens her passion to explore and improve our understanding of scientific knowledge flows.
Job Titles:
- Chairman
- Member of the Scientific Committee
- Professor of Palaeoclimates and Biogeochemical
Sandy Harrison is a Professor of Palaeoclimates and Biogeochemical Cycles at the University of Reading in the UK, and also a High-End Expert at the Northwest Agricultural & Forestry University (NWAFU) Yangling, China. She studied geography at the University of Cambridge, did her Masters in geomorphology at Macquarie University and a PhD in Quaternary science at the University of Lund in Sweden. Professor Harrison is a palaeoclimate diagnostician with a special interest in the role of the land-surface, terrestrial biosphere, fire and hydrological processes on modulating regional climates. She uses large-scale syntheses of data in combination with global models to diagnose these interactions. She is Co-Chair of the Palaeoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project (PMIP), where she leads the effort to evaluate climate models that are used to project future climate change against palaeoclimate data. She is also a member of the Inter-Academy Partnership (IAP) Project Committee on "Improving Scientific Input to Global Policymaking: Strategies for Attaining the Sustainable Development Goals".
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Committee
- Director WDS Regular Member: WDC - Geomagnetism, Kyoto
- Professor Emeritus of the Graduate School of Science
- Professor of the Graduate School of Science
Toshihiko Iyemori is a professor emeritus of the Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University, and director of the Data Analysis Center for Geomagnetism and Space Magnetism (DACGSM) which belongs to the graduate school. Since 1981, he has been serving geomagnetic data collected by the World Data Center for Geomagnetism, Kyoto, which the DACGSM operates. He was a president of the Society of Geomagnetism and Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences for 2011-2013 and a member of the Executive Committee of IAGA for 2009-2015. His major research field is the Solar-Terrestrial Physics and he is also investigating the electromagnetic effects of lower atmospheric disturbance to geospace. He is one of the members who created the IUGONET (Inter-university Upper atmosphere Global Observation NETwork) which is a network of distributed databases based on a common metadata database.
Job Titles:
- Director
- Director of the AII - Russian Research Institute of Hydrometeorological Information - WDC
- Expert
Kopylov has been the Director of the AII-Russian Research Institute of Hydrometeorological Information-WDC of the Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring since March 2011. The main purpose of the Institute is development of information technologies for creating and maintaining the State Fund of data on the environmental situation in Russia. The State Fund of the Institute includes data about the environment of the Soviet Union and Russia over the entire period of instrumental observations. Kopylov is a member of the interdepartmental commission of Russia in the functioning of the unified state system of information on the oceans.
Kopylov is an expert in the receiving, processing, storing, and disseminating of satellite remote sensing data. He is also a specialist in the development of Global Information System technologies for monitoring the environment using integrated terrestrial and satellite data. Under his leadership, and with his active participation, were established modern regional centres for receiving, processing, and disseminating satellite data in Novosibirsk and Khanty-Mansiysk in Russia. Since 2005, he has been actively working in this area with both the European Space Agency (ESA) and the International Association for the Northern Regions 'Northern Forum'. For the past 14 years, he was Professor of Novosibirsk and Ugra (Khanty-Mansiysk) state universities, where he lectured on Programming Techniques, Remote Sensing, and Geoinformatics.
Job Titles:
- Vice - Chair
- Chief Data and Information Officer for the South African Environmental Observation Network
- Systems Architect
Wim Hugo is the Chief Data and Information Officer for the South African Environmental Observation Network (SAEON) and part of its executive management. He is responsible for provision of Earth and Environmental research data and decision support infrastructure in South Africa, working with a large number of stakeholders.
Current projects include the development of Global Change Risk and Vulnerability decision and policy support, evidence-based feasibility assessments of renewable energy, development of Spatial Data infrastructure for South Africa, and establishment of Research Data Management Infrastructure for the South African National Research Foundation. He also leads projects processing of increasingly automated long-term environmental observation data streams - utilising machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Wim Hugo is the systems architect for a number of interdependent data portals in South Africa: the South African Environmental Observation Network Data Portal, SAEOS, and the Risk and Vulnerability Atlas. New initiatives also fill out his portfolio such as WDC for Biodiversity and Human Health in Africa, extensions to other science disciplines, an Operational Oceanography initiative, and the African BioEnergy Atlas. He represents the South African Global Earth Observation (SAGEO) community in the Data Subcommittee of the Committee for Spatial Information-charged with establishing a South African Spatial Data Infrastructure-and works with the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) to disseminate South African state-funded data sources through their 'System of Systems', GEOSS. As well as being a member of the WDS-SC, he is a member of the EuroGEOSS Advisory Board.
He obtained a B.Eng (Chem) from the University of Potchefstroom in 1983, and a Master's degree in Chemical Engineering in 1985. After graduation, Wim worked in the synthetic fuels industry in the fields of catalytic research, operations and logistics optimization, technical marketing management, and subsequently as an independent consultant specializing in feasibility studies and techno-economic optimization. Increasing interest in systems for optimization and decision support led to a career change in 1998. Wim joined MBV Consulting Group-a formal systems engineering company-in 1999 as a Director, specializing in planning and decision support systems. This specialization expanded to include systems for scientific data dissemination, with a focus on spatial data, and on network-based spatial analysis techniques.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Scientific Committee
- Director, Integrated Science Data System Laboratory at NICT )
- Director, Integrated Science Data System Research Laboratory ( ISDS ) at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology ( NICT )
- Member of Committee