Yolanda Gil Recognized for Outstanding Contributions to Geoinformatics

YOLANDA GIL

The ISI researcher has brought artificial intelligence solutions to the geosciences.

On Sunday, October 9, 2022, at the annual Geological Society of America meeting, USC’s Information Sciences Institute’s (ISI)  Yolanda Gil was awarded the M. Lee Allison Award for Outstanding Contributions in Geoinformatics and Data Science.  She is the first computer scientist to receive this award.

The award recognizes a single individual every year “who has contributed in an outstanding manner to geology through the application of the principles of Geoinformatics.” In the field of geoinformatics, researchers and scientists apply cutting-edge tools and research from the world of information sciences to address the issues within geosciences.

Gil, who serves as Director for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science Strategy at Viterbi, has been recognized countless times in computer science and engineering societies. This award is particularly exciting as it acknowledges Gil’s contributions to another discipline.

Gil’s recent research on artificial intelligence includes tools for task-centered collaboration for water resources, crowdsourcing vocabulary standards for climate data, and intelligent assistance for modeling interventions in the face of natural disasters.  She is best known for the Geoscience Papers of the Future, an initiative she led that promotes best principles for reproducible research, open science, and digital scholarship across earth, ocean, atmospheric, and geospace sciences.

Read the full story on USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s website