Xiaogang Ma (; born 1980) or Marshall Ma is a

data science Data science is an interdisciplinary academic field that uses statistics, scientific computing, scientific methods, processing, scientific visualization, algorithms and systems to extract or extrapolate knowledge from potentially noisy, stru ...

and

geoinformatics Geoinformatics is a scientific field primarily within the domains of Computer Science and technical geography. It focuses on the programming of applications, spatial data structures, and the analysis of objects and space-time phenomena relate ...

researcher at the

University of Idaho The University of Idaho (U of I, or UIdaho) is a public land-grant research university in Moscow, Idaho, United States. Established in 1889 and opened three years later, it was the state's sole university for 71 years, until 1963. The un ...

(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.

Early life and education

Ma was born in

Tianmen Tianmen () is a sub-prefecture-level city (sometimes considered a county-level city) in central Hubei Province, China. It is on the Jianghan Plain, on the west side of Wuhan (the biggest city of Central China, as well as the capital of Hubei) a ...

, an inland county in Central China. He finished college and graduate studies at

China University of Geosciences (Wuhan) The China University of Geosciences (Wuhan) is a public university in Wuhan, Hubei, China. It is affiliated with the Ministry of Education, and co-funded by the Ministry of Education and the Hubei Provincial People's Government. The university is ...

in the early 2000s. Then in 2007 he went to ITC, the Netherlands for PhD study, originally affiliating with

Utrecht University Utrecht University (UU; , formerly ''Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht'') is a public university, public research university in Utrecht, Netherlands. Established , it is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands. In 2023, it had an enrollment of ...

and then

University of Twente The University of Twente ( ; Abbreviation, abbr. ) is a Public university, public technical university located in Enschede, Netherlands. The university has been placed in the top 170 universities in the world by multiple central ranking tables. ...

. In 2011, he was awarded a PhD degree of Earth System Science and GIScience from

with his dissertation "Ontology Spectrum for Geological Data Interoperability". In early 2012, Ma joined the Tetherless World Constellation at

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (; RPI) is a private university, private research university in Troy, New York, United States. It is the oldest technological university in the English-speaking world and the Western Hemisphere. It was establishe ...

(RPI) as a postdoctorate fellow, with financial supports from the

Sloan Foundation The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is an American philanthropic nonprofit organization. It was established in 1934 by Alfred P. Sloan Jr., president and chief executive officer of General Motors. The Sloan Foundation makes grants to support origin ...

and

NSF NSF may stand for: Political organizations *National Socialist Front, a Swedish National Socialist party *NS-Frauenschaft, the women's wing of the former German Nazi party * National Students Federation, a leftist Pakistani students' political g ...

. At RPI, he received intensive training of data science methods and semantic technologies, and he participated and led several research projects. In 2014, Ma was promoted to associate research scientist at RPI.

Career

Ma's research addresses the needs of methods and building blocks in the

cyberinfrastructure United States federal government agencies use the term cyberinfrastructure to describe research environments that support advanced data acquisition, data storage, data management, data integration, data mining, data visualization and other computin ...

ecosystem to facilitate

. At RPI, he took leadership roles for ontology development in the Global Change Information System of the

U.S. Global Change Research Program The United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) coordinates and integrates federal research on changes in the global environment and their implications for society. The program began as a presidential initiative in 1989 and was codified b ...

and data science activities of the Sloan-funded

Deep Carbon Observatory The Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) is a global research program designed to transform understanding of carbon's role in Earth. DCO is a community of scientists, including biologists, physicists, geoscientists and chemists, whose work crosses severa ...

. He also taught a data analytics course for the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at RPI. In 2016, Ma joined the Department of Computer Science at

(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, where he contributed to the

development. In 2018, he co-initiated the U.S. Semantic Technologies Symposium (US2TS) and received sponsorship from

, the

, and

Elsevier Elsevier ( ) is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as ''The Lancet'', ''Cell (journal), Cell'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, ...

's Artificial Intelligence journal. Since 2017, Ma has worked intensively on the deep-time data science, with several projects funded by

and

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

, including the OpenMindat project to provide open access to the data of

Mindat.org Mindat.org is a non-commercial interactive online database covering minerals around the world. Originally created by Jolyon Ralph as a private project in 1993, it was launched as a community-editable website in October 2000. it is operated by ...

, the largest database of minerals in the world. He has also been active in community programs or initiatives, including the Deep-Time Data Infrastructure, the Deep-time Data Driven Discoveries, and the

IUGS The International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) is an international non-governmental organization devoted to global cooperation in the field of geology. As of 2023, it represents more than 1 million geoscientists around the world. About Fo ...

Deep-time Digital Earth. In 2020 and 2021, Ma led a team of researchers from four U.S. universities and received a multi-million grant from

to conduct cross-disciplinary data science studies on climate change, ecology, biology, socioeconomics, and public health. Ma is co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Applied Computing & Geosciences, and associate editor or editorial board member for several others, including Computers & Geosciences, Data Science Journal, Earth Science Informatics, and Big Earth Data. He has been the Chair of the Semantic Technologies Committee of the

Earth Science Information Partners Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) is a community of data and information technology practitioners that come together to coordinate Earth science interoperability efforts. Participation in ESIP allows members to enhance their data managemen ...

(ESIP) since 2023. Previously, he served as voting councilor (2016-2020) of IAMG and chair (2019-2025) for its Awards Committee, Chair of the Geoinformatics and Data Science Division of the

Geological Society of America The Geological Society of America (GSA) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of the geosciences. History The society was founded in Ithaca, New York, in 1888 by Alexander Winchell, John J. Stevenson, Charles H. Hi ...

, Chair of the Task Group for Coordinating Data Standards amongst Scientific Unions under

CODATA The Committee on Data of the International Science Council (CODATA) was established in 1966 as the Committee on Data for Science and Technology, originally part of the International Council of Scientific Unions, now part of the International ...

, and Member of the Independent Review Board for

's Planetary Data Ecosystem. Ma is also active in several other data science and geoinformatics communities, including the

American Geophysical Union The American Geophysical Union (AGU) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization of Earth, Atmospheric science, atmospheric, Oceanography, ocean, Hydrology, hydrologic, Astronomy, space, and Planetary science, planetary scientists and enthusiasts that ...

, the

Research Data Alliance The Research Data Alliance (RDA) is a global research community-driven organization started in 2013 by the European Commission, the US National Science Foundation and National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Australian Department o ...

, and the

Commission for the Management and Application of Geoscience Information.

Representative publications

Books, book chapters & journal special issues

*2024
"Geoscience Ontologies and Knowledge Graphs"
(lead editor), Elsevier. Special Issue of Applied Computing & Geosciences, ISSN 2590-1974 *2024
"Progress of Geoinformatics in Earth and Environmental Sciences"
(lead editor), Springer. Special Issue of Earth Science Informatics, ISSN 1865-0473 *2023
"Advances in Geoscience Ontologies and Knowledge Graphs"
(co-editor), Springer. Special Issue of Journal of Earth Science, Volume 34, Issue 5. ISSN 1867-111X *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
"Provenance in Earth AI"
Artificial Intelligence in Earth Science, Elsevier, Amsterdam *2023
"Recent Advancement in Geoinformatics and Data Science"
(lead editor), GSA Special Paper Book V. 558, Boulder, CO, USA *2018
"Data Science for Geoscience: Leveraging Mathematical Geosciences with Semantics and Open Data"
Handbook of Mathematical Geosciences: Fifty Years of IAMG, Springer, Berlin *2015
"Semantic eScience"
(lead editor), Springer. Special Issue of Earth Science Informatics, ISSN 1865-0473 *2011
"Ontology Spectrum for Geological Data Interoperability"
PhD Dissertation at ITC, University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands, 184p., ISBN 978-90-6164-323-4

Journal articles & commentaries

*2022
"Data sharing: more science unions must act"
Nature, 610(7931), 25
preprint

supplementary material
*2022
"Knowledge graph construction and application in geosciences: A review"
Computers & Geosciences, 161, 105082 *2018
"Information extraction and knowledge graph construction from geoscience literature"
Computers & Geosciences, 112, 112-120 *2014
"Capturing provenance of global change information"
Nature Climate Change, 4(6), 409-413

Awards

*2024 Best Paper Award, Geoscience Information Society *2024 M. Lee Allison Award of Geoinformatics,

*2024 Presidential Mid-Career Award, University of Idaho *2023 Excellence in Interdisciplinary and Collaborative Efforts Award, University of Idaho *2023 Postdoctoral Mentoring Award, University of Idaho *2021 Outstanding Early-Career Faculty, University of Idaho College of Engineering *2018 SciTS Meritorious Contribution Award, Science of Team Science Conference *2015 Andrei B. Vistelius Research Award,

International Association for Mathematical Geosciences The International Association for Mathematical Geosciences (IAMG) is a nonprofit organization of geoscientists. It aims to promote international cooperation in the application and use of mathematics in geological research and technology. IAMG's act ...

*2014 Data Stewardship Award, International Council for Science World Data System *2012 Funding Friday Research Grant, Federation of Earth Science Information Partners

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ma, Xiaogang 1980 births University of Twente alumni China University of Geosciences alumni Chinese computer scientists Living people People from Tianmen Chinese expatriates in the Netherlands Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute faculty University of Idaho faculty Chinese expatriate academics in the United States Scientists from Hubei