Leaving No One Off the Map: Gridded Population Data for Decision-Making

Dr. Robert Chen is one of three co-chairs of the Thematic Research Network on Data and Statistics (TReNDS), an initiative of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN). He is director of CIESIN, the Center for International Earth Science Information Network, a research unit of the Earth Institute at Columbia University based in New York, and also manages the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC), part of NASA’s Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS). Dr. Chen also co-leads the Human Planet Initiative for the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) an intergovernmental initiative to implement a Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS), and is a member of the Science Advisory Boards of Creative Commons and the Climate Change Science Institute of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He received his PhD in geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and M.S. and B.S. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Maryam Rabiee is SDSN’s TReNDS Manager, managing the Network’s initiatives, including the POPGRID Data Collaborative. Before joining SDSN, Maryam was a Research Associate at the University of Melbourne where her research focused on the social impact of geospatial information and technologies on the SDGs, a whole-systems approach to disaster management RD&D supporting the SDGs and Sendai Framework, and United Nations Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM) Academic Network’s sustainable development initiatives. Maryam holds an M.A. in Anthropology from Columbia University, an M.A. in Middle East Studies from the American University of Paris, and a BA in Anthropology from the University of Washington.