Seven scholars from diverse disciplines have joined the User Working Group (UWG) of NASA's Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) operated by Columbia University’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN).
The UWG provides strategic guidance to SEDAC on user needs and priorities for interdisciplinary data and services that support research and applications on human-environment interactions. The new members are: Sara Curran, director of the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology at the University of Washington; Keith Garrett, senior geographer with the Geospatial Operational Support Team at the World Bank; Laura Kurgan, director of the Center for Spatial Research (CSR) at Columbia University; Stefan Leyk, associate professor of geography at the University of Colorado; WenWen Li, head of the CyberInfrastructure and Computation Intelligence Lab at Arizona State University; Julie Sweetkind-Singer, interim assistant university librarian for Science and Engineering Resources (SERG) at the Stanford University Libraries; and Danielle Wood, lead of the Space Enabled Research Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab. The new members are expected to serve for four years.
The UWG is chaired by Barbara Ryan, former executive director of the Group on Earth Observations, and currently includes ten other members from the public and private sectors. Nancy Searby of NASA′s Applied Sciences Program recently became SEDAC′s program scientist.