Who are we?
The Data Patch is Abby Benson and Steve Formel. With a combined 25 years of data management experience, Abby and Steve have helped develop international and US national standards and practices for open data, implementing the FAIR principles, federal data management requirements, and cutting edge data types like eDNA, PAM, and telemetry.
Abby Benson started as an ecologist studying thirteen-lined ground squirrels on prairie dog colonies in Colorado before discovering her passion for data at USGS. A champion for making biodiversity data useful, her interest focuses on the drivers and effects of changing ecosystems on organisms at a national scale and the role management can play in mitigating harm.
Abby served as the node manager for OBIS-USA from 2018 - 2023 and the node manager for GBIF-US from 2019 - 2023. She has been heavily involved in data management communities like ESIP, TDWG, and the GBIF and OBIS communities. She has worked with the Marine Biodiversity Observation Network, Global Ocean Observing System, National Ecological Observatory Network, and many others to share their data to these global systems. She also launched the ESIP Biological Data Standards cluster in 2021 winning the ESIP Catalyst Award in 2022 and the Standardizing Marine Biological Data working group in 2019.
Steve Formel is a microbial ecologist by training, with past research focusing on the relationship between a salt marsh grass, its microbiome, and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. In 2021 he turned his attention toward improving data management and standards implementation for large, complex data and projects.
Steve’s experience includes archiving data as a data officer for NOAA’s NCEI, developing and implementing data management solutions for large complex projects, like the Mesophotic and Deep Benthic Communities (MDBC) Restoration Portfolio and serving as the US node manager for OBIS and GBIF with the USGS. He currently serves as co-chair for the ESIP Biological Data Standards cluster and remains involved with TDWG and the Genomics Standards Consortium. He recently joined the OBIS Secretariat as a Data Officer, supporting the EU project, MARCO-BOLO.