Name: Dr. Robert Chen
Position: Director, Center for International Earth System Information Network at Columbia University; Secretary General, Committee on Data for Science and Technology, United States

Biography: Dr. Robert S. Chen is Director of CIESIN, the Center for International Earth Science Information Network, a research unit of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and the World Data Center for Human Interactions in the Environment. He is Secretary-General of CODATA, the Committee on Data for Science and Technology of the International Council for Science (ICSU), and a member of the new ICSU ad hoc Strategic Coordinating Committee on Information and Data. He is also a co-chair representing ICSU on the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Data Sharing Task Force and leader of an ICSU/CODATA project to develop a Polar Information Commons.At Columbia University, Dr. Chen is an ex officio member of the Earth Institute Faculty and serves on the Faculty Steering Committee for the Columbia Global Centers | Beijing. He manages SEDAC, the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center, and serves as an ex officio member of the IPCC Task Group on Data and Scenario Support for Impacts and Climate Analysis. He is currently a member of the US NRC Committee on Spatial Data Enabling USGS Strategic Science in the 21st Century and an ex officio member of the NRC Board on Research Data and Information.Dr. Chen received his Ph.D. in geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and holds Masters and Bachelors degrees in Earth and Planetary Sciences and Technology and Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.