Statement Maull

Back to 2020 Nominations and Ballot

Keith Maull

BACKGROUND Keith has been involved in ESIP since 2018 and worked to bring to fruition the development of the interactive computational environment ESIPHub, based on the Jupyter Notebooks technology. ESIPHub was used in several workshops in the summer of 2018 and winter 2019 meetings. He holds a PhD in computer science from the University of Colorado, Boulder and a BA in computer science from Indiana University, Bloomington. He is currently a software engineer and data scientist in the research library at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, where he focuses on scholarly metrics and reproducible research.

PERSONAL STATEMENT I have a passion for data science, analysis and data literacy, and hope to bring that passion to my role as the education chair. I see students at all levels overwhelmed not only by the volume of data they're confronted with, but also with the process and science of data. I feel platforms like Jupyter Notebooks do not do enough to help foster the discipline of data analysis and this is not because there aren't enough examples or tools to draw upon. I hope to call upon expertise within the ESIP community to urgently improve on this and develop real solutions for educators to integrate these platforms into their curricula. Of course, no concern for data can ignore the role computational thinking plays in analysis and again, I hope to bring the intense energy I have from my computer science background to the committee to encourage and recruit anyone and everyone interested in contributing. Finally, educators struggle to bring data literacy concepts to their students, and the ESIP community holds a wealth of expertise to bear on effective ways to develop strategies teachers could employ directly in their classrooms to facilitate conversations about data quality, permanence, ethics and sovereignty.

I would be delighted and honored to serve as committee chair and whether I am selected or not, plan to make substantive contributions to the committee in the coming year.