European Geosciences Union
Division on Earth and Space Science Informatics
President: Jens Klump (essi@egu.eu)
Deputy President: Jane K. Hart
(jhart@soton.ac.uk)
As far as informatics and information technology are concerned, the ESSI division deals with Community-driven and multidisciplinary challenges and solutions. This include topics like: data model and metadata standardization, spatial data infrastructure interoperability, semantics services, quality and uncertainty information encoding and propagation, geospatial data processing, environmental model accessability, big data management, and data visualization for scientific discovery.
It is with the deepest sadness that EGU reports the death on 27 March 2021 of Dr. Peter Fox, Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Computer Science, and Cognitive Science at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in the United States.
Fox was a pillar of the global informatics community and pivotal in establishing the ESSI divisions within both EGU and AGU. In 2012, his peers recognised this contribution when they awarded him the EGU’s Ian McHarg Medal for his role in establishing informatics as a genuine discipline within the Earth Sciences.
To mark Fox’s passing, representatives from EGU, AGU, ESIP, and other organisations have collaboratively authored a remembrance that highlights the impact he had both professionally and personally as a colleague, advocate, mentor and friend. A Kudo Board has also been created for those who wish to leave their own remembrances of Dr. Fox.
The premature passing of Fox is a huge loss for the global Earth and Space Science Informatics community, and his absence will be felt for a long time to come. But it is his family and friends who will feel his passing most keenly, so it is to them that EGU extends its deepest condolences.
Helen Glaves
EGU Vice-President
The 2021 Division Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award is awarded to Alice Fremand for her major contributions towards establishing the data centre for geothermal data in Alsace (Centre de Données de Géothermie Profonde, CDGP) as a state-of-the-art research data repository.
The 2020 Ian McHarg Medal is awarded to Paul Wessel for outstanding contributions to developing open-source software, including Generic Mapping Tools (GMT), for the Earth and space sciences that have enabled thousands of research projects and papers.
The June issue of The Loupe is all about Oceans! With both World Oceans Day and the International Day of the Seafarer falling in June, we thought what better month to focus on the work of EGU researcher studying the Oceans. We spoke with Ocean Science Division Early Career Scientist Rep Meriel Bittner on how to get involved in the Division and learned about the reality of research onboard a research vessel for LGBTQIA+ people from guest blogger Huw Griffiths.
The Loupe also shares some vital information for scientists concerned about their work being misrepresented by policymakers, either accidentally or on purpose, from EGU’s Policy Officer Chloe Hill for the GeoPolicy blog, and features a call for new members to be nominated to the Equality Diversity and Inclusion Working Group.
In addition to the latest Journal Watch and GeoRoundup of June EGU journal highlights, this issue also highlights the opening of the call for EGU22 scientific session submissions, the deadline for which is 6 September 2021.