| Doug Beard - has been employed by the
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Bureau of Fisheries Management and Habitat Protection
for the last 9 years. His current position is the Treaty Fisheries Specialist, but he has also
held positions as the Treaty Fisheries Data Coordinator and Fisheries Database
Coordinator. Doug has a B.S. in Biology from U.W.-Eau Claire, a M.S. in Fish
and Wildlife Science from Penn State University and is currently working on
his Ph.D at U.W.-Madison. He has been actively involved with the chapter,
division and society levels of American Fisheries Society since 1987. As
part of his job duties with the Wisconsin DNR, he has been involved with
regional and national efforts to promote data sharing, such as the
Multistate Aquatic Resources Information System (MARIS) and National
Freshwater Fisheries Database Summit. Doug's role in the MARIS effort was to
act as Wisconsin's representative and work with the other representatives to
tie together information in a single format from 6 states through a singular
Internet interface. |
| Margaret Beer - has been the Information
Manager for the Montana Natural Heritage Program (based in the Montana State Library) since 1988.
She has a B.A. from the University of Minnesota, and her background includes advertising, marketing,
technical writing, and business administration. She is responsible for the overall acquisition,
management, growth, and dissemination of Montana Natural Heritage Program information, which
includes GIS, Internet, and data base components. |
| Peter Bottenberg - leads the Environmental Group in Professional Services at ESRI in Redlands California. Pete has 12 years experience at ESRI consulting and managing environmentally related GIS projects. Pete's general expertise is in developing and implementing large scale enterprise data dissemination systems utilizing ESRI's suite of WWW enabling mapping products. |
| Dr. John Busby - is currently the
Director of Heritage, Science and Core Data with the Environmental Resources Information Network
(ERIN), Environment Australia (EA). In previous lives, John was Program Manager of the Biodiversity
Conservation Information System (BCIS), Head of Capacity Building at the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC), Director for Environmental Science at ERIN, and Information Systems Manager for
the Australian Biological Resources Study (ABRS). He specialises in planning and facilitating the
development of multi-agency,interdisciplinary environmental information networks at national and global scales, with a focus on providing environmental information for
policy development, decision support, research and public education.
|
| Nick Conrad - is the Information Manager with the
New York Natural Heritage Program, where he coordinates the development of the NYNHP databases and GIS,
and the dissemination of NYNHP data to users in the private and public sectors. Nick has been with the
NYNHP since 1992. He received his Master's in Zoology from the University of New Hampshire. |
| Dr. Anne Frondorf - is currently
the Program Manager for the National Biological Information Infrastructure, U.S. Geological
Survey, in Reston, VA. Prior to this, she worked for more than 15 years in the headquarters
office of the National Park Service, where she helped develop programs for management and
dissemination of natural resources information on the national parks. Anne has a Ph.D. in
natural resources management from the University of Arizona and a B.A. in Botany from Pomona College.
|
| Patrick Gaul - is the GIS Application Development
Coordinator for the California Department of Fish and Game, working to develop and maintain GIS and database
solutions in support of a broad range of departmental projects. Recently he has been focusing on distributed
information systems employing database replication and Internet technology. Foremost among his ongoing projects
has been the California Natural Diversity Database (CNDDB), an integrated ARC/INFO GIS and Oracle database
application that manages data for elements of biodiversity. Patrick has been an influential member of the
Element Occurrence Design effort, incorporating and refining those principles employed in the CNDDB spatial model.
As such, he has been active advocate of the use of GIS in biodiversity databases. Patrick also teaches ArcView
course at San Francisco State University, and internally for Fish and Game staff.
|
| Ben Goodkind - is the Heritage Data Management System (HDMS) Project Manager for the Association for Biodiversity Information (ABI). Ben joined ABI last summer after spending the last 10 years working as a consultant developing custom software solutions. Past projects focused on client/server and
Internet applications across multiple industries, such as telecommunications, health care, and benefits administration. Ben received a degree in computer science from Brown University.
|
| Mike Graber - is a Systems Engineer
with the Microsoft Business Solutions Group based out of the Denver office in the Rocky Mountain
District. The Business Solutions Group is focused on working with developers on the benefits of
building distributed applications on Microsoft tools and platforms using Microsoft Windows Distributed
Internetworking Architecture (DNA), the Component Object Model (COM) and SQL Server. In addition,
Mike also focuses on development tool products such as Visual Studio. Mike has been with Microsoft
for 4 years. Prior to Microsoft, Mike spent 4 years as an application developer creating shrink-wrapped
products for both the medical and gaming industry using Microsoft development tools and platforms.
Mike has a Bachelor's degree in business from the University of Denver.
|
| Tim Hall - is the Project Leader for the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Environmental Conservation Online System (ECOS). Since its
inception two years ago, Tim has focused on migrating existing database systems to the Web and
integrating distributed data systems under one comprehensive interface. A 23 year veteran
biologist for the Service, Tim has spent the last 15 years involved with development and
implementation of biological based GIS capability at FWS field offices and the last 6 years
involved with development of Web based data support systems in support of the Service's ecosystem
approach to fish and wildlife management. Tim's early work in Web based distributed systems led
to the development and adoption of the Internet browser technology as the standard user interface
for all future national systems, a component of the Service Information Technology Architecture.
As a member of the Service's GIS Steering Committee, Tim works to broaden the effort and opportunities
of GIS in the Service. Academic background includes a B.S. from the University of Maryland in
Conservation and Resource Development with additional Masters program work in Ecology and Computer
Sciences from The University of Maryland and the University of Alabama, Huntsville. |
| Leslie Honey - has been with The Nature Conservancy since 1990 where she joined the Botany department as a research assistant participating in the Conservancy's study of the potential effects of climate change on native North American plants. Since 1995, Leslie has been responsible for managing
numerous federal grants focusing on developing and disseminating species and natural communities information. Leslie is a member of the NatureServe project team serving the role of science representive. |
| Shara Howie - in her current position at the Association for Biodiversity Information, Shara
is the Manager of the Services Department of ABI's Information Division. She
is also the acting manager of the MJD project, which is an effort to support
the improvement, aggregation and provision of species location data developed
by U.S. and Canadian Heritage Programs and Conservation Data Centers. Shara
worked for The Nature Conservancy's Conservation Science Division for ten
years, initially as a database specialist, and later as a project manager and
Central Database Program Director. Shara has a background in biology, and
prior to coming to the Conservancy, worked at the Smithsonian Institution's
Museum of Natural History. |
| Dr. Doug Johnston - is an Associate Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture, a Senior Research Scientist at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, and Director of the Geographic Modeling Systems Lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received bachelor degrees from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, a masters from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Washington.
His research focuses on the development and use of geospatial models for resource assessment and allocation in environmental planning problems and geospatial information technology. He has worked extensively on environmental management problems for state and federal agencies, particularly the U.S. Army Engineering Research and Development Center. Professor Johnston provides leadership for the local Environmental Hydrology Applications Technology (EHAT) Team of the National Computational Science Alliance and through the GMSlab created a strong core group of research and technical staff in GIS to assist researchers and users in the applications of geospatial technology components to their work.
Dr. Johnston has designed and produced several museum exhibits focusing on representation of hydrologic and ecological processes using computation and scientific visualization as the foundation. He has also designed numerous applications for the management and analysis of data including the Illinois Streams Information System (ISIS), the Training Requirements Analysis and Integration with Environmental Resources System (TRAINER), GeoView, the Multistate Aquatic Resources System (MARIS) and the Illinois Air Photo Repository. He recognizes the need to create catchier names for projects, and much to the dismay of his MARIS partners, does not fish.
|
| Robert Leitch - is the System Administrator of
the New Mexico Natural Heritage Program in the Biology Department of the University of New Mexico, where he
maintains and develops the NMNHP databases and networks. Robert has been with the NMNHP since November
1999 and has worked for other UNM departments since 1992. He received his Bachelor's in Economics from the
University of New Mexico and Associate Degree's in both Business Administration and Computer Information
Science from Eastern New Mexico University. |
| Dr. Erick Mata Montero - is the
coordinator of information management for the Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad (INBio) in
Heredia, Costa Rica. Prior to coming to INBio, he was the Director of the M.Sc. program in
Computer Science at the Instituto Technológico de Costa Rica. His areas of research include algorithmic graph theory, programming
languages, and multimedia, biodiversity information, and object-oriented systems. Dr Mata received his PhD from the University of Oregon in 1990 from the
Department of Computer Sciences. |
| Dr. Mark Schaefer -
recently became President and CEO of the Association for Biodiversity Information. He previously
served in several senior positions in the federal government including Deputy Assistant Secretary
of the Interior and Assistant Director for Environment in the White House Science Office. Earlier
in his career he was director of the Washington Office of the Carnegie Commission on Science,
Technology, and Government, was a staff member at the congressional Office of Technology Assessment,
and was a congressional science fellow. A biologist by training, he received a B.A. from the
University of Washington and Ph.D. from Stanford University. |
| Sabra Schwartz - is currently the Coordinator
for Arizona’s Heritage Data Management System (housed within the Arizona Game and Fish Dept.). She
started working with the HDMS in 1989, after receiving her B.S. in biology from Northern Arizona University.
Except for two years spent working in the Penguin Encounter at Sea World of Florida, she has spent her entire
career with the HDMS in Arizona, starting as data manager. She is responsible for the overall administration,
coordination, and development of the HDMS. |
| Dr. Marcos Silva - is the Program Manager
for the North American Biodiversity Information Network. Dr. Silva joined the Commission for Environmental
Cooperation in July 1996. He has much experience as an educator and data librarian, with a
special interest in using technology to bridge geographic and cultural gaps. He is presently an
Adjunct Professor with the Distance Education Program at McGill University, innovating ways students
and teachers located in remote regions of Canada can adapt to Internet technology. Prior to joining
the CEC, Dr. Silva was a Faculty Lecturer with the Faculty of Education and Head of Computer Services
for the Humanities and Social Sciences Libraries at McGill University. Dr. Silva continues to teach
courses at McGill at the graduate and undergraduate levels on computer networks and Internet services
and protocols. He has a Ph.D. in applied cognitive science, an M.L.S. from McGill University, and a
graduate diploma in political science from Concordia University. |
| Dr. Bruce Stein -
is Director of External Affairs for the Association for Biodiversity Information, a leading source
of scientific information about rare and endangered species and ecosystems. Dr. Stein served as a
senior scientist with The Nature Conservancy for more than a decade, during which time he worked to
establish and support biological inventory efforts in the United States and in Latin America and the Caribbean. He is the author of a number of articles and reports focusing on the development, use, and application of biodiversity information. His most recent publication is the book Precious Heritage: The Status of Biodiversity in the United States (Oxford University Press), which draws together more than a quarter century of data from U.S. natural heritage programs to document how the species and ecosystems in the United States are faring. Dr. Stein holds a B.A. in Biology and Environmental Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz and received his Ph.D. from Washington University, St. Louis in a joint program with the Missouri Botanical Garden. |
| Dr. Pradip Srimani - is a Professor of
Computer Science at Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, Colorado. He has previously served the
faculty of India Statistical Institute, Calcutta, Gesselschaft fuer Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung,
Bonn,Germany, Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, India and Southern Illinois University.
At present he is visiting Universite de Technologie de Compiegne, France as a CNRS Fellow. His
research interests include distributed computing, fault-tolerant computing, and networks. He is
currently the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Computer Society Press and is a member of the Editorial
Boards of IEEE Software Magazine and IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering.
He is a Fellow of IEEE. |
Dr. David Vieglais - is a researcher currently at The Natural History Museum and
Biodiversity Research Center at the University of Kansas where he directs
the development of an internet based, distributed biodiversity network
called the Species Analyst. He is responsible for all aspects of software
architecture and implementation, and oversees the development of standards
on which the Species Analyst and other KU lead projects are based. David
received his Ph.D. in the area of plant physiology from the University of
Queensland in 1993, and has since worked on a diverse range of projects such
as global climate change studies with NASA and commercial software
development with Delta-T devices of the UK.
|
| James Wakefield - has been a
Technical Account Manager with Oracle for 4 years supporting Federal customers in the Department
of the Interior and Department of Energy. He has spent more than 10 years working with
client/server and Internet application development strategies and solutions including work as
developer, data warehouse architect, DBA and project leader. Prior vendor experience
includes 2 years at Sybase as a Partner Solutions Engineer. Jim has a B.S. in Computer Information
Systems from California Polytechnic State University, Pomona.
|
| Boykin Witherspoon III - is a project manager in the Environmental Group at ESRI in Redlands California. Boykin has 10 years of experience developing protocols and standards for generating various types of environmental indices including biodiversity. Boykin's general expertise is in GPS enabled field data logging technologies, clearing house/warehouse based data assimilation strategies and WWW based spatial data dissemination technologies. |
