2023-11-07 –, Talks
The NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) Information Policy (whimsically named "SPD-41a") prescribes that NASA data be findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR). Despite the catchy acronym, these aims are not new: the scientific community has in principle always strived for data to meet these criteria. Of course, the devil is in the details. There is no "FAIR" specification or unit test to pass, so what "findable" or "accessible" might mean will vary between user groups, communities from different backgrounds, different archives, and even different datasets within an archive. (Certainly no one wants to think the data they make available are not easy to find.) This talk will explore these ideas in more detail, discuss NASA’s efforts in implementing FAIR for SMD data, and an overview of how FAIR astronomical data actually are.
Demitri Muna is a support scientist at the Chief Science Data Office at NASA Headquarters. He has a long background in developing astronomical software on projects like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and Starchive, and has several open source packages available on GitHub. Demitri created and has taught the SciCoder workshop for early career astronomers since 2010. He will always ask you about the user interface for your code before the nuts and bolts behind it.