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. He manages the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC), part of NASA’s network of earth science data centers. He also co-manages the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Data Distribution Center, which provides access to data and information from IPCC assessments and reports. Dr. Chen recently completed two terms as Secretary-General of the Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA), an interdisciplinary body of the International Council for Science. He is currently a co-chair of the Data Sharing Working Group of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), an intergovernmental initiative to implement a Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS). He is also a member of the U.S. National Research Council (NRC) Board on International Scientific Organizations (BISO) and has served as an ex officio member of the NRC Board on Research Data and Information (BRDI). Dr. Chen is a member of the Science Advisory Boards of Creative Commons and of the Climate Change Science Institute of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. At Columbia, Dr. Chen is an ex officio member of the Earth Institute Faculty and a member of its Practice Committee, and is serving on the faculty advisory committee for the Columbia Global Center | East Asia. Dr. Chen received his Ph.D. in geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and M.S. and B.S. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.