Noah Daniels
University of Rhode Island, RI·Computer Science
Scientific data are only reusable if they come with metadata: a description of where the data came from, how they were collected and what they mean. Good metadata helps make data FAIR, meaning Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable.
- Fields
Computer Science
Biology
- Topics
metadata
FAIR data
findable accessible interoperable reusable
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Feb 2029
What they work on
- Develop the MEDFORD language and parser as a human-readable layer that converts researchers' metadata into popular machine-readable metadata standards and FAIR databases.
- Test the usability of MEDFORD with scientists, students and members of the public, including marine biologists studying coral reefs and biologists studying animal hosts of tick-borne diseases.
- Refine the MEDFORD language based on principled user studies in scientific communities with differing needs, so metadata is easy to write, read and correct.
More about the research
Most metadata formats, however, are built for computers to read and are hard for scientists who are not programmers to write. This collaborative project develops MEDFORD, a metadata language and toolset that people can easily read and write. MEDFORD is still structured enough to be converted automatically into popular metadata standards and databases.
Why it matters
Domain scientists hold crucial knowledge about their data but often find FAIR metadata practices cumbersome. A human-friendly metadata language could help researchers who are not programmers, such as coral reef biologists and tick-borne disease ecologists, document their data in ways that databases can use. This could make scientific datasets easier to find, reproduce and reuse.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Stuart Chalk
University of North Florida, FL·Computer Science
Develop core components of KnowLedger, an open digital research notebook that records data and notes, connects to online resources, and can be tailored to different scientific workflows.
David Elbert
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Materials Science
Coordinate data producers, users, repositories and publishers through the Materials Research Coordination Network (MaRCN) to make depositing materials data in trusted repositories the norm under FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) principles.
Kerstin Lehnert
Columbia University, NY·Earth & Environmental Science
Modernize EarthChem, an open geochemistry data repository, by re-engineering its systems for scale and building better human- and machine-readable tools for data discovery, visualization and analysis.
The school
University of Rhode Island: 9 labs on PI Pages, $137M a year on research, 93 research doctorates a year.
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