ICSU-WDS Data Stewardship Award

The WDS Data Stewardship Award highlights exceptional contributions to the improvement of scientific data stewardship by early career researchers.

Awardees are nominated by representatives of ICSU World Data System Members and Working Groups, ICSU Interdisciplinary Bodies, and ICSU National and Union Members. Winners are then selected by a panel of members of the WDS Scientific Committee based on their achievements in the abovementioned areas. To qualify as an 'early career researcher', nominees must be typically below 40 years-of-age and within ten years of completing their PhD or equivalent professional training.

2013 Award Winner

The 2013 WDS Data Stewardship Award was won by Dr Robert Redmon (World Data Service for Geophysics) who was presented with both the Award and a prize at SciDataCon 2014

Dr Robert Redmon is an outstanding early-career researcher at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) who has demonstrated an amazing capacity for, and dedication to, scientific data stewardship. Within the World Data Service for Geophysics [WDS Regular Member], Dr Redmon is responsible for stewarding, and delivering to the international research community, the space environmental datasets obtained from NOAA’s Polar-orbiting and Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite systems.

2014 Award Winner

The 2014 WDS Data Stewardship Award was won by Dr Xiaogang (Marshall) Ma (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute). Unfortunately, Dr Ma was unable to attend SciDataCon 2014, but gave a short presentation to the assembled audience via video conferencing

Dr Xiaogang Ma is a geoinformatics and data science researcher. His PhD research at ITC, University of Twente was closely related to OneGeology—a global data exchange initiative—while more recently, he has worked on provenance representation and capture of data in scientific workflows at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

2015 Award Winner

The 2015 WDS Data Stewardship Award was won by Dr Yaxing Wei (Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center [ORNL DAAC]). Dr Wei will be presented with the 2015 Award and a prize at SciDataCon 2016.

Dr Yaxing Wei is a geospatial information scientist in the Environmental Sciences Division of the Climate Change Science Institute at ORNL who has demonstrated many exceptional contributions to scientific data stewardship in the Environmental and Global Climate Change Sciences. Dr Wei leads several tasks related to data standardization, integration, documentation, and management support for geospatial data informatics projects funded by NASA, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and the National Science Foundation.

2016 Award Winner

The 2016 WDS Data Stewardship Award was won by Dr Boris Biskaborn (Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research). Dr Biskaborn will be presented with the 2016 Award and a prize at SciDataCon 2016

Dr Boris Biskaborn is an accomplished geoscientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Potsdam, Germany, with expertise and involvement in many different scientific endeavours pertaining to the polar regions and data science. He leads the Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost (GTN-P), which has been completely reshaped through both his conception of a new data management system and his creation and mobilization of a network of national correspondents worldwide.