Biography

As an aquatic ecologist and biodiversity informatics specialist, Joan is interested in best practices for using environmental data and biodiversity records to determine changes over time. Her past research focused on resurvey studies of biological indicator groups for freshwater ecosystem health, including dragonflies and benthic macroinvertebrates. This work involved digitizing natural history specimens and other historical data, and extensive data quality control. Joan worked in a team to develop an online platform for specimen label transcription, and managed citizen science outreach and education efforts. She has expertise in data curation and analysis of opportunistic datasets, which requires error detection and accounting for collection biases. She has also worked in an interdisciplinary team to study how researchers are using primary biodiversity databases in published research.

Joan is currently interested in ensuring that important environmental datasets are standardized, curated, and made publicly accessible. As a postdoc at LBNL, she will be working with the community of Earth and Environmental Scientists to develop and use relevant data standards in their work.