Scientist at Work: Beth Plale
Potato blight . . . air traffic safety . . . pharmaceutical development . . . forest sustainability. As one of the nation's leading computer scientists, Indiana University's Beth Plale has got her fingers on so much more than a mouse and keyboard these days.
Photo by Chris Meyer
Beth Plale is director of both the Center for Data and Search Informatics and the Data to Insight Center, both operated within IU's Pervasive Technology Institute. An associate professor of computer science and informatics, Plale sees applications for cloud computing and data provenance in everything from corporate pharmaceuticals development to sustainable forestry practices in developing countries.
The titles alone are daunting: Director of both the Center for Data and Search Informatics and the Data to Insight Center at Indiana University's Pervasive Technology Institute, associate dean of research in the School of Informatics (until July 1), and finally, and of no less import, associate professor of computer science and informatics in the IU School of Informatics.
Since coming to Indiana University from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2001 as an assistant professor of computer science, Plale has had her name as investigator or co-investigator on more than $25.8 million in federal and private grant awards to IU. Each of those awards in some way sought to inject the potential assets of integrated data and information management into a cross section of scientific endeavor ranging from the timely predicting of crop diseases for Michigan farmers to enhancing new drug development scenarios at Eli Lilly & Co.
Evidence of the increasing need for vital technological resources like data provenance -- the historical lineage of specific collections of scientific information -- and cloud computing, where dynamic technological systems are made available to other researchers not necessarily trained in that technology, is also manifested in the interdisciplinary frameworks of the latest proposals Plale has participated in.
"Tools and Rules: Enabling Cross-Site Analysis of Community Managed Forest Systems," is a $2.2-million National Science Foundation pending proposal made with investigators in IU's Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Department of Geography and the School of Public and Environmental Affairs. If funded, the project would use data sharing, preservation tools, cloud computing and virtual organizations to enhance the research and policy impacts related to monitored forest systems in developing countries.
In May, researchers in anthropology, geography, the IU Digital Libraries Program, University Information Technology Services and the IU School of Library and Information Sciences joined Plale in submitting a $20 million proposal now under review that would create the Sustainable Environment through Actionable Data (SEAD) project, and in turn allow for the study of long-term preservation and use of digital scientific data in sustainability science. Joining IU in the project proposal are the University of Michigan and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
"I think cloud computing will have a huge impact in scientific disciplines such as sustainability and atmospheric sciences that require immediate reaction to events," Plale said. "Data centers are well suited to handling the burst that comes when a new Web offering is made. Similarly, they can handle the burst that comes when a severe summer storm comes up and resources are needed immediately to react and respond."
That's exactly why officials with the Federal Aviation Administration are trying to address why one in four of the 50,000 daily commercial flights in the U.S. last year were delayed or canceled. They believe there is fruit to be picked from the NSF-funded Linked Environments for Atmospheric Discovery (LEAD) project Plale has been involved in since 2003.
That project provides weather-related search capabilities over heterogeneous, distributed data sources, provenance collection about data products, and metadata collection and storage -- all to assist with mesoscale meteorology forecasting.
"FAA sees the LEAD cyberinfrastructure as a model for utilizing both traditional, controlled sensor networks, and less well-known sensor networks such as state mesonets that have sensor towers spread across a state, to make predictions and derive knowledge that can improve air traffic control," she said.
But it's not all about the research for Plale. In her first year at IU she co-founded the active Women in Informatics and Computing @ IU (WIC@IU), an organization dedicated to enhancing opportunities for women in technology.
Energy she directs toward training the next generation of data scientists and managers is also housed at the Center for Data and Search Informatics, and through new computer science courses in data mining and data and search informatics that will be offered this fall. She also currently advises seven Ph.D. candidates at IU.
"The data scientist is one who works where the research is carried out -- or, in the case of data center personnel, in close collaboration with the creators of the data -- and may be involved in creative enquiry and analysis, enabling others to work with digital data and developments in data base technology," she said. "The data manager is the computer scientist, information technologist or information scientist who takes responsibility for computing facilities, storage, continuing access and preservation data. Our goal is to develop new programs to educate both the data scientist and data manager."
Plale holds a Ph.D. in computer science from State University of New York-Binghamton, a master of science in computer information science from Temple University, a master of business administration from the University of La Verne and a bachelor of science in computer science from the University of Southern Mississippi.
