My research interests are spatial data infrastructure, with emphasis on the study of geography (B.S. and M.S. in Geography from University of South Carolina). I have worked at Esri in Redlands, CA for four years as a consultant, helping large organizations manage and share their spatial data. Last Fall, our company decided to release the Esri Geoportal Server product as 100% open source, under the Apache 2.0 license on sourceforge.

Kevin Murphy is receiving the Falkenberg Award because of his extraordinary accomplishments as the system architect for NASA’s Earth Observing System Data and Information System (­EOSDIS). In this role, Kevin Murphy has greatly expanded the utilization and exploitation of NASA’s vast Earth science data holdings. With ~15 petabytes of remote sensing data hosted at a dozen Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs), ­EOSDIS is one of the largest Earth science information systems in the world.

I'm a statistician and data science leader with experience spanning 40 fields and 150+ data projects. Over the years, I've been fortunate to serve as the data + tech advisor to executives, translating strategy into data-driven action. I like building technical capacity from the ground up, having been a co-founder of three data science teams that have produced cutting edge prediction programs.

Jeff de La Beaujardière received his B.A. in physics in 1985 from the University of California, Berkeley, and his Ph.D. in astrophysics in 1990 from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Since 1994 he has been working on public accessibility and usability of Earth observations at NASA and NOAA.

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.

Ann M. Bartuska leads the Land, Water, and Nature Program at RFF. She joined RFF in 2017 after serving as the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Deputy Under Secretary for Research, Education, and Economics as well as chief scientist. Prior to USDA, Dr. Bartuska held a host of leadership positions, including Deputy Chief for Research and Development of the US Forest Service.