Dr. Robert R. Downs serves as the senior digital archivist and acting head of cyberinfrastructure and informatics research and development at CIESIN, the Center for International Earth Science Information Network, a research and data center of the Earth Institute of Columbia University. He earned the PhD in Information Management from the Stevens Institute of Technology. He is the Vice-Chair of the Columbia University Morningside Institutional Review Board, co-leader of the Group on Earth Observations System of Systems (GEOSS) Evolve Data Management Principles team, co-chair of the Research Data Alliance (RDA) Interest Group on Repository Platforms for Research Data, a member of the Data Archive Interoperability group of the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS), and a member of the Editorial Board of the CODATA Data Science Journal. He also is a Senior Member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and a member of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the International Association for Social Sciences Information Services and Technology (IASSIST).