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 2021 Virtual Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (vOSPP) Award is awarded to Christian Scharun Modeling methane from the North Sea region with ICON-ART
In the December issue of The Loupe we learn about the vital importance of mountain glaciers with Harry Zekollari in this month’s special webinar Vanishing Glaciers and seak to ECS Cryosphere Division blogger Larissa van der Laan about her work on glaciers and how she uses science-art in her career as a researcher and artist.
You can also watch the free recording of our special webinar about Digitalk:online (geo)science communication, available now on our YouTube channel.
Don’t forget to submit your abstract for EGU22, which is still intended to be held as a hybrid event 3 – 8 April 2022! Find out more here as well as information about the registration fees and submit your abstract by 12 January 2022 at 13.00 CET.
In addition this issue also shares the latest Journal Watch and GeoRoundup of December EGU journal highlights.