John L. Schnase

John L. Schnase (john.l.schnase@nasa.gov) attended Angelo State University, Texas; the University of Texas at Austin; Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas; and Texas A&M University in College Station, where he received a Ph.D. degree in computer science in 1992. Before joining NASA in 1999, his work on the natural history of Cassin's sparrow resulted in an early application of computers in avian energetics modeling. Currently, he is the climate informatics focus area lead in the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Office of Computational and Information Sciences and Technology, where his work focuses on the development of advanced information systems to support Earth sciences. He holds adjunct faculty appointments at George Mason University and the University of Maryland, College Park. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a member of the executive committee of the Computing Accreditation Commission of ABET, and currently cochairs the Ecosystems Societal Benefit Area of the Office of Science and Technology Policy National Observation Assessment. Schnase, along with Tsengdar Lee, cochaired the 2014 Big Data in Space Conference special session “Big Data Challenges in Climate Science” upon which this article is based.