ESIP FEDERATION PRESENTS AWARDS TO RECOGNIZE MEMBER CONTRIBUTIONS

January 16, 2012 — The Federation for Earth Science Information Partners presented held its annual awards ceremony during the Winter ESIP Federation meeting on January 4, 2012.  Peter Fox of the Tetherless World Constellation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute was the recipient of this year’s Martha Maiden Award for Outstanding Service to the Earth Science Information Community.   

 In presenting the award to Professor Fox, Mark Parsons of the National Snow and Ice Data Center offered, “Everyone knows and respects Peter. It took me about five minutes to get a half dozen top experts from around the world to support Peter’s nomination. And it's clear why.” Mr. Parsons went on to note Dr. Fox’s involvement with many of the leading science and data organizations in the world such as AGU, EGU, IUGG, the International Council of Science and CODATA, or through the dozens of informatics committees Professor Fox has led or inspired.

In accepting the award, Professor Fox said, “Your opinion of me is none of my business and that has been extremely important for me as I show up and imperfectly do the things that I do in service work, or in academics or in project work. I shouldn’t know what you think of me but rather I really care about what we’ve done and how we’ve done it as that is the most important thing.” He went on to add, “This award in particular thus is very special because to me, it’s about what I have done, and maybe how I’ve done it rather than who I actually am.” In thinking about the ESIP Federation and other community organizations, Dr. Fox noted, “For this community really to go forward it must complement the highly application-based nature of this organization and organizations like it with a very strong academic component to this community. We have some of those people in this room but we certainly don’t have enough.  We don’t only produce things, but we think about how we’re producing them so that our sustainable future is based on an understanding of how we do things.”

 

In addition to the Martha Maiden Award, the ESIP Federation presented its new President’s Award to recognize significant contributions made to the ESIP Federation. The 2012 recipients of the ESIP Federation President’s Award are Tamara Shapiro Ledley of TERC for her work in advancing Earth science education and Christopher S. Lynnes of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center for his work championing coordinated data discovery across the community.

 

The ESIP Federation is a consortium of Earth science data and technology professionals spanning government (NASA, NOAA, EPA, USGS, NSF), academia and the private sectors (both commercial and nonprofit). The organization is dedicated to transforming research data and information into useful and usable data and information products for decision makers, policy makers and the public. Initiated by NASA in 1997, the ESIP Federation provides data, products and services to decision makers and researchers in public and private settings. The Foundation for Earth Science provides administrative and staff support to the ESIP Federation.