Dr. Robert Chen

Robert S. Chen is director of CIESIN, the Center for International Earth Science Information Network, a unit of the Earth Institute at Columbia University based in New York. He has managed the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC), one of NASA’s Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs), for more than 20 years. He is currently co-chair of the Thematic Research Network on Data and Statistics (TReNDS) of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, co-lead of the Human Planet Initiative of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), and a Councilor of the American Geographical Society. At CIESIN, Dr. Chen manages a range of sponsored projects and activities dealing with geospatial data, tools, and services; sustainable development; hazards and climate change; and data stewardship. He leads the POPGRID Data Collaborative and co-manages the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Data Distribution Center. Dr. Chen received his Ph.D. in geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and BS and MS degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.