Brandon Whitehead’s job is to “link data together coherently,” as he put it. Take icebergs, for example: Those with steep sides and flat tops can be called tabular icebergs, tabular bergs, table icebergs, or barrier icebergs. One of Whitehead’s projects involves linking data sets so that scientists won’t be thrown off by inconsistent terminology.
Whitehead is an environmental data scientist at Manaaki Whenua–Landcare Research, a Crown Research Institute in Aotearoa New Zealand where scientists study how to sustainably support the environment and biodiversity. Part of his work involves finding ways to describe the commonality between different worldviews. That could be relevant in New Zealand, where the holistic view of the Māori people often differs from the general approach of Western science.
Whitehead’s love of science goes back to his experience attending middle school outside Minneapolis, where one teacher in particular made science exciting with hands-on activities. Whitehead remembered a time when that teacher used a slingshot constructed from bicycle inner tubes to propel office chairs carrying students down a hallway to illustrate inertia and momentum.
As an undergraduate and then a master’s student at Minnesota State University, Mankato, Whitehead discovered that he loved both Earth science and computing. He also learned that inconsistently reported data can be a huge stumbling block to research. For example, while studying how the water table had changed in two states (New Mexico and Texas), “the amount of gymnastics I had to do to get those two data sets…to play nicely together was ridiculous,” he remembered.
“In today’s world, everything is data.”
After leaving Minnesota, Whitehead spent several years working for private companies in California—which also let him follow his passion for beach volleyball—before he moved to New Zealand and began making data accessibility a full-time job.
“In today’s world, everything is data,” Whitehead said. His goal is to help scientists squeeze as much information out of the data as possible.
—Saima May Sidik (@saimamaysidik), Science Writer
This profile is part of a special series in our August 2024 issue on science careers.
Citation: Sidik, S. (2024), Brandon Whitehead: Unifying data to streamline discovery, Eos, 105, https://doi.org/10.1029/2024EO240331. Published on 25 July 2024.
Text © 2024. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.
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