Join NSF CI Compass for the next installment in our webinar series: "10 Years Curating Natural Hazards Data in DesignSafe: Community, Platform, and Impact" featuring Maria Esteva, a Senior Research Scientist at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at the University of Texas at Austin.
This webinar will take place on Monday, December 8, 2025, at 9 a.m. PT / 11 a.m. CT / 12 p.m. (Noon) ET.
Abstract
Over 10 years, the DesignSafe Data Depot Repository (DDR) has evolved in close association with the natural hazards research community that it serves. A Core Trust Seal Certified Repository, it enables curation and preservation of varied data types, representative of the multiple and ever evolving research methods and instruments used to understand the impact of natural hazards in the built environment and the society. This presentation will introduce DDRs curation pipelines and services, how those are designed, maintained, and improved by a multidisciplinary team, the feedback mechanisms that inform changes, how we assist users and measure impact, and the challenges and lessons learned. As we move forward, we have plans and prototypes to incorporate AI responsibly, based on a decade of experience modeling large and complex datasets.
Bio
Maria Esteva is a Senior Research Scientist at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at the University of Texas at Austin. Her work focuses on the design, implementation, and evaluation of data curation applications. She is the data curator for the Core Trust Seal Certified DesignSafe Data Depot Repository, the Digital Porous Media Portal and the Texas Robotics Dataverse. She works with interdisciplinary teams of scientists and developers designing policies and best practices, developing data models and curation and publication pipelines, implementing data impact metrics, and assisting users. She has a PhD in Information Science and an Advanced Certificate in Preservation Administration from the University of Texas at Austin.
