Vijay Barve

Vijay has been a nature enthusiast from childhood with a special love for birds and insects. He earned a master degree in Computer Science in India, and thereafter joined a non-profit organization contributing in medicinal plant documentation and conservation issues. He developed a keen interest in biodiversity informatics and has a PhD in Geography from the University of Kansas. His doctoral research focused on citizens’ contribution to biodiversity data mobilization. His post-doc at the Florida Museum of Natural History focused on community science and butterfly biodiversity informatics, which he followed with postdoctoral research at Purdue University, working on terrestrial parasites. Vijay has been involved with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility both as data mobilization mentor and data user. He also serves on various committees for the Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) group.

Vijay is the DigIn Digitization Project Manager responsible for engaging with all 19 institutions in the consortium. He is charged with empowering participants with tools for data cleaning, georeferencing, data importing and exporting to/from collection databases, as well as, helping consortium users with creating sustainable pipelines to move specimen data to iDigBio and GBIF beyond the life of the grant.