Robert Hanisch (Fed)

Dr. Robert J. Hanisch joined NIST in July 2014 as the director of the Office of Data and Informatics (ODI) within the Material Measurement Laboratory.  He is focused on providing data management and dissemination services for NIST research data products, including the Standard Reference Data collection and the Materials Genome Initiative.  He is active in national and international data sharing and interoperability initiatives such as the National Data Service Consortium and the Research Data Alliance.  Dr. Hanisch was previously a Senior Scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), Baltimore, Maryland, and the director of the U.S. Virtual Astronomical Observatory, a program funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.  Over the past twenty years Dr. Hanisch has led many efforts in the astronomy community in the area of information systems and services, focusing particularly on efforts to improve the accessibility and interoperability of data archives and catalogs. He was the first chair of the International Virtual Observatory Alliance Executive Committee (2002-2003).  From 2000 to 2002 he served as Chief Information Officer at STScI, overseeing all computing, networking, and information services for the Institute. Prior to that he had oversight responsibility for the Hubble Space Telescope Data Archive and led the effort to establish the Multimission Archive at Space Telescope—MAST—as the optical/UV archive center for NASA astrophysics missions. He completed his Ph.D. in Astronomy in 1981 at the University of Maryland, College Park.