Krzysztof Janowicz, an Assistant Professor for Geographic Information Science and Geoinformatics in UCSB’s Department of Geography, has been awarded a Hellman Family Faculty Fellowship (see http://www.hellmanfellows.org/). The award provides him with funding to support his project entitled “ADL Linked Data Gazetteer” and to fund a graduate student researcher for 2013-2014.
According to Dr. Janowicz, “The project will revive UCSB’s dormant ADL Gazetteer (a place name dictionary) by transforming it into a semantics-enabled Linked Data gazetteer encoded using the Recourse Description Framework (RDF). The project will research place ontologies for the semantic annotation of gazetteer data and linking frameworks to connect the ADL data to other Linked Data sources. The new gazetteer will be hosted by UCSB’s library and act as research enabler by supporting stable and globally accessible place identifiers to georeference scientific data at UCSB and beyond. More information about gazetteers and georeferencing can be found in Linda Hill’s wonderful book: Hill, Linda L. (2006). Georeferencing. The MIT Press.”
Established by F. Warren Hellman in 1995, the purpose of the Hellman Family Faculty Fund is to provide substantial support for the research of promising assistant professors who show capacity for great distinction in their research. At least two-thirds of the funds allocated each year support assistant professors in the physical and life sciences and engineering; up to one-third can support assistant professors in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. The maximum award is $50,000.
The quality of the research proposed is the most important criterion for selection. Awards are made without regard to the apparent timeliness or popularity of the field of study and without reference to ethnicity or gender; preference may be given to research not supported substantially by other sources and to faculty who have not previously received an award from the Fund. Mr. Hellman has observed that junior faculty are often well-funded when first hired. Problems arise in 2-3 years when start-up funding is exhausted and before first grants are obtained. The Fund is designed to assist promising young faculty at this point in their careers.
