Post date: Mar 31, 2014 12:42:08 PM
– CIESIN is sad to report that associate director for Geospatial Applications Mark Becker died in a multi-vehicle accident on February 26, 2014. He was 53. In his fifteen years at CIESIN, Mark led or contributed to a wide range of research activities on topics such as arsenic contamination in Bangladesh, air pollution effects on child health, storm surge impacts, earthquake vulnerability assessment, natural resource mapping, and climate change education. He taught courses in many different schools at Columbia University, including a popular two-semester sequence in the Sustainable Development program of Columbia College. He also taught at Bard College. A student scholarship fund in his honor has been established. Tributes to Mark are online at: http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2014/03/04/a-life-well-mapped/ and http://www.ciesin.columbia.edu/becker.html.
– CIESIN director Robert Chen has been elected to the governing council of the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), an international consortium of more than 700 academic institutions and research organizations focused on advancing social and behavioral research. Chen is one of six new council members beginning four-year terms in March 2014. See: http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/support/announcements/2014/02/new-icpsr-council-members-named-achen
– Chen has also been named a member of the U.S. delegation to the Belmont Forum E-Infrastructure and Data Management Knowledge Hub, an 18-month scoping programme (September 2013 –April 2015) that aims to develop e-infrastructure communities and strategies to meet the Belmont Challenge, “To deliver knowledge needed for action to avoid and adapt to detrimental environmental change including extreme hazardous events.”
– CIESIN senior digital archivist Robert Downs has been elected to serve as the representative of the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) on the Board of Directors for the Foundation for Earth Science. The Foundation supports research networks and communities that provide the information systems backbone for the dissemination and use of Earth science information. His term extends to 2017. See: http://earthsciencefoundation.org/.