Xiaogang Ma

Chinese computer scientist

Xiaogang Ma

马小刚

Ma at Idaho EPSCoR Conference 2016

Born| 1980 (age 43-44)

Tianmen, Hubei, China

Other names| Marshall Ma
Alma mater| Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute,
ITC, University of Twente,
China University of Geosciences (Wuhan)
Awards| IAMG Vistelius Award,
ISC World Data System Data Stewardship Award,
SciTS Meritorious Contribution Award
Scientific career
Fields| Data science, Geoinformatics, Cyberinfrastructure
Institutions| University of Idaho
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
ITC, University of Twente
Doctoral advisor| Freek van der Meer,
John Carranza,
Chonglong Wu
Other academic advisors| Peter Fox (Postdoctoral Mentor)
Website| webpages.uidaho.edu/max/

Xiaogang Ma (Chinese: 马小刚; born 1980) or Marshall Ma is a Chinese data science and geoinformatics researcher at the University of Idaho (UI), United States. He is an associate professor in the department of computer science at UI, and also affiliates with the department of earth and spatial sciences and several research institutes and centers at the university.[1]

## Early life and education[edit]

Ma was born in Tianmen, an inland county in Central China. He finished college and graduate studies at China University of Geosciences (Wuhan) in the early 2000s. Then in 2007 he went to ITC, the Netherlands for PhD study, originally affiliating with Utrecht University and then University of Twente.[2] In 2011, he was awarded a PhD degree of Earth System Science and GIScience from University of Twente with his dissertation "Ontology Spectrum for Geological Data Interoperability".[2] In early 2012, Ma joined the Tetherless World Constellation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) as a postdoctorate fellow, with financial supports from the Sloan Foundation and NSF.[3] At RPI, he received intensive training of data science methods and semantic technologies, and he participated and led several research projects.[4] In 2014, Ma was promoted to associate research scientist at RPI.[5]

## Career[edit]

Ma's research addresses the needs of methods and building blocks in the cyberinfrastructure ecosystem to facilitate data science. At RPI, he took leadership roles for ontology development in the Global Change Information System[6][7] of the U.S. Global Change Research Program and data science activities of the Sloan-funded Deep Carbon Observatory.[8] He also taught a data analytics course for the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at RPI.[9]

In 2016, Ma joined the Department of Computer Science at University of Idaho (UI). He continued his research on data science and geoinformatics at UI, including knowledge graphs, open data, and algorithms for spatio-temporal analysis, and he created several new courses related to data science and open data. In 2016 and 2017 Ma was an affiliate scientist with MILES - Managing Idaho's Landscapes for Ecosystem Services project,[10] where he contributed to the cyberinfrastructure development. In 2018, he co-initiated the U.S. Semantic Technologies Symposium (US2TS) and received sponsorship from NSF, the Sloan Foundation, and Elsevier's Artificial Intelligence journal.[11] Since 2017, Ma has worked intensively on the deep-time data science, with several projects funded by NSF and NASA, including the OpenMindat project to provide open access to the data of Mindat.org, the largest database of minerals in the world.[12][13] He has also been active in community programs or initiatives, including the Deep-Time Data Infrastructure,[14] the Deep-time Data Driven Discoveries,[15] and the IUGS Deep-time Digital Earth.[16] In 2020 and 2021, Ma led a team of researchers from four U.S. universities and received a multi-million grant from NSF to conduct cross-disciplinary data science studies on climate change, ecology, biology, socioeconomics, and public health.[17]

Ma is associate editor or editorial board member for several journals, including Computers & Geosciences, Applied Computing & Geosciences, Data Science Journal, Earth Science Informatics, and Big Earth Data. He has been the Chair of the Awards Committee of the International Association for Mathematical Geosciences (IAMG) since 2019.[18] Previously, he served as Councilor of IAMG, Chair of the Geoinformatics and Data Science Division of the Geological Society of America, Chair of the Task Group for Coordinating Data Standards amongst Scientific Unions under CODATA,[19][20] and Member of the Independent Review Board for NASA's Planetary Data Ecosystem.[21] Ma is also active in several other data science and geoinformatics communities, including the American Geophysical Union, the Research Data Alliance, and the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners.

## Representative publications[edit]

* 2023: "Encyclopedia of Mathematical Geosciences" (section editor - geoinformatics), Springer, Cham, Switzerland
* 2023: "The Geoscience Knowledge System, Ontology and Knowledge Graph for Data-driven Discovery" (co-editor), Elsevier. Special Issue of Geoscience Frontiers, ISSN 2588-9192
* 2023: "Recent Advancement in Geoinformatics and Data Science" (lead editor), GSA Special Paper Book V. 558, Boulder, CO, USA
* 2022: "Data sharing: more science unions must act", Nature, 610(7931), 257 preprint | supplementary material
* 2022: "Knowledge graph construction and application in geosciences: A review", Computers & Geosciences, 161, 105082
* 2018: "Data Science for Geoscience: Leveraging Mathematical Geosciences with Semantics and Open Data", Handbook of Mathematical Geosciences: Fifty Years of IAMG, Springer, Berlin
* 2018: "Information extraction and knowledge graph construction from geoscience literature", Computers & Geosciences, 112, 112-120
* 2015: "Semantic eScience" (lead editor), Springer, Berlin. Special Issue of Earth Science Informatics, ISSN 1865-0473
* 2014: "Capturing provenance of global change information", Nature Climate Change, 4(6), 409-413

## Awards[edit]

* 2023 Excellence in Interdisciplinary and Collaborative Efforts Award, University of Idaho[22]
* 2023 Postdoctoral Mentoring Award, University of Idaho[23]
* 2021 Outstanding Early-Career Faculty, University of Idaho College of Engineering[24]
* 2018 SciTS Meritorious Contribution Award, Science of Team Science Conference[25]
* 2015 Andrei B. Vistelius Research Award, International Association for Mathematical Geosciences[26]
* 2014 Data Stewardship Award, International Council for Science World Data System[27]
* 2012 Funding Friday Research Grant, Federation of Earth Science Information Partners[28]

## References[edit]

1. ^ "Xiaogang (Marshall) Ma".
2. ^ a b Xiaogang Ma (November 2011). Ontology Spectrum for Geological Data Interoperability (PhD thesis). University of Twente. ISBN 9789061643234.
3. ^ "Xiaogang (Marshall) Ma". Tetherless World Constellation. July 1, 2016.
4. ^ "Xiaogang (Marshall) Ma | Tetherless World Constellation".
5. ^ "Xiaogang Ma promoted to Associate Research Scientist | Tetherless World Constellation". Archived from the original on 2021-10-20. Retrieved 2021-10-20.
6. ^ "About the Global Change Information System - GCIS". US Global Change Research Program.
7. ^ "Global Change Information System". March 30, 2021 - via GitHub.
8. ^ "Xiaogang Ma's Projects". Tetherless World Constellation. July 1, 2016.
9. ^ "Geographic Information Systems in the Sciences". Tetherless World Constellation. January 4, 2013.
10. ^ "Managing Idaho's Landscapes for Ecosystem Services | MILES". www.idahoecosystems.org.
11. ^ "U.S. Semantic Technologies Symposium 2018". U.S. Semantic Technologies Symposium 2018.
12. ^ "Mindat and University of Idaho collaborate on 'OpenMindat'". mindat.org.
13. ^ Ma, Xiaogang; Ralph, Jolyon; et al. (29 May 2023). "OpenMindat: Open and FAIR mineralogy data from the Mindat database". Geoscience Data Journal. Wiley. doi:10.1002/gdj3.204. ISSN 2049-6060.
14. ^ "DTDI". dtdi.carnegiescience.edu.
15. ^ "homepage | Carnegie 4D Project". 4d.carnegiescience.edu.
16. ^ "DDE world". www.ddeworld.org.
17. ^ "TickBase project". tickbase.net.
18. ^ "IAMG Awards Committee". iamg.org.
19. ^ "CODATA Task Group". codata.org.
20. ^ Ma, Xiaogang; Wyborn, Lesley; Hodson, Simon (2022). "Data sharing: more science unions must act". Nature. 610 (7931): 257. Bibcode:2022Natur.610..257M. doi:10.1038/d41586-022-03233-2. PMID 36220927. S2CID 252784551.
21. ^ "Final Report of the Planetary Data Ecosystem Independent Review Board, April 2021" (PDF). nasa.gov.
22. ^ "Faculty Award Winners 2022-23, University of Idaho".
23. ^ "Faculty Award Winners 2022-23, University of Idaho".
24. ^ "College of Engineering Awards - University of Idaho".
25. ^ "2018 Awards".
26. ^ IAMG Newsletter
27. ^ "2014 Award Winner — World Data System: Trusted Data Services for Global Science".
28. ^ "FUNding Friday Projects". 10 November 2021.

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