Current Board Members

Budhendra Bhaduri (Chair)

Dr. Budhendra “Budhu” Bhaduri is the Chief Data Officer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), providing executive leadership for an enterprise-wide data and AI strategy that accelerates scientific discovery and operational excellence. A Corporate Research Fellow, Dr. Bhaduri has spearheaded initiatives covering novel implementation of geospatial science and technology for a wide variety of programs supporting energy, environment, and national security missions across the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Homeland Security. From 2014-2019, he founded and led ORNL’s Urban Dynamics Institute, a cross-disciplinary initiative across the laboratory that fostered a data driven understanding of complex urban systems. Over his career, Dr. Bhaduri’s research has had global impact and has benefited the U.S. federal missions, international organizations, and philanthropic foundations. Dr. Bhaduri received his Ph.D. in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences from Purdue University. He has an MS degree from Kent State University, and a M.Sc. and a B.Sc. from University of Calcutta, India.

Devika Jain

Devika Jain leads the area of GeoAI and Spatial Data Science at the Center for Geographic Analysis (CGA), Harvard University. She has led the development of several impactful GIS resources, including the Twitter Sentiment Geographic Index (TSGI), a UN-recognized spatial well-being metric, and the university-wide Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) at Harvard. She serves as Chair of the Membership Committee of the University Consortium for GIS (UCGIS), Chair of the Awards and Scholarship Committee of Women in GIS, and Vice Chair of the Applied Geography Specialty Group (AGSG) of the American Association of Geographers (AAG). She is Associate Editor of Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy and serves on the Exam Development Committee of GISP-e. Jain is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including the Springer Nature Editor of Distinction Awards, the Geospatial World Rising Star Award, the Women in GIS and Esri Distinguished Contributions Award, and the AAG Health Data Visualization Award.

Geri Miller

Geri Miller is Director of Education at Esri. Her main role is to support academic institutions and help them stay on the cutting edge of geospatial technology. Prior to that, she was an Instructor and Technical Lead at Esri, specializing in online and onsite delivery of various geospatial technology courses. Ms. Miller is also an Associate Program Director for the Johns Hopkins University Master of Science in Geographic Information Systems program and has been a lecturer in the program since its inception. She has developed and taught a range of the GIS curriculum, including Web GIS, Spatial Analytics, and Programming in GIS courses.

Donal O’Leary

Dr. O’Leary is Director of Research and Development at LandYield where he works with a team of experts across the geospatial and biometric domains to create data products, insights, and intellectual property in the development of forest carbon offset projects. Combining his years of on-the-ground conservation leadership with his academic and technical training in geospatial sciences, Donal is excited to apply these skills to support the conservation of privately-owned forests across the United States. Donal’s first act was as a trail crew leader for the National Park Service and a wilderness guide across the western USA. Seeking a greater impact, Donal earned his Ph.D. in Geographical Sciences from the University of Maryland where he studied and published alongside NASA scientists as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow.

Vini Perin

Dr. Perin is a Geospatial Software Engineer with a background in agriculture, hydrology and environmental science. He earned a Ph.D. in Geospatial Analytics from North Carolina State University, where he was awarded a Future Investigator in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology fellowship. Soon after receiving his Ph.D., Perin joined Planet Labs to help maintain and develop algorithms to process global satellite imagery using distributed cloud computing.

Conghe Song

Dr. Conghe Song is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Song is an interdisciplinary scholar. His research spans three closely related themes: (1) monitoring land-cover/land-use changes with remote sensing, (2) estimating the ecosystem consequences of the land-cover/land-use changes in the context of climate change with ecosystem models, and (3) understanding the land-cover/land-use change dynamics, particularly in the rural setting, through household surveys and agent-based models. He publishes in a wide range of journals, such as Remote Sensing of Environment, Journal of Geophysical Research, Landscape Ecology, Population and Environment, Forest Economics and Policy, Ecological Economics, Land Use Policy, and Journal of Rural Studies. Dr. Song served and is serving as a PI for projects funded by NSF, NASA, and USDA. He holds a PhD in Geography from Boston University, an MS degree in Forest Ecology from Beijing Forestry University, and a BS degree in Forestry from Anhui Agricultural College.

Chelsey Walden-Schreiner

Dr. Walden-Schreiner is the Director of Science Development at Vibrant Planet passionate about the ability of place and technology to bring data, disciplines and people together to address socio-environmental challenges. Across her roles in academia, industry and philanthropy, she has worked closely with stakeholders from government agencies, nonprofit organizations and communities to co-create models and decision-support tools addressing pressing environmental challenges. She has a Ph.D. and MS in geospatial data science and natural resources, and a BA in journalism.