Lea Shanley

Biography

Lea Shanley, PhD, is the President and CEO at the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI), an independent nonprofit Affiliated Institute of UC Berkeley that pioneers research in computing and data sciences for global impact.

Throughout her career, Dr. Shanley’s research and leadership roles have focused on bringing spatial technologies, computer-supported cooperative work, social computing, and open science to bear on scientific and societal challenges, as well as on tackling issues in technology policy and data governance. Prior to joining ICSI, Dr. Shanley served as a senior fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; White House Presidential Innovation Fellow in the Office of the Chief Technologist at NASA Headquarters; co-Executive Director of the National Science Foundation’s South Big Data Innovation Hub; Director of the Wilson Center’s Commons Lab; program officer at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM); and AAAS Congressional Science Fellow in the U.S. Senate.

During nearly a decade in Washington, DC, Dr. Shanley worked closely with leaders in the White House, Congress, and federal agencies on science & technology policy direction and legislative priorities. As a science advisor in the U.S. Senate, for example, she crafted the Earth Science Section of the 2010 NASA Authorization Act, which mandated the first whole-of-government National Civil Earth Observation Strategy & Plan. She also co-founded and co-chaired the Federal Community of Practice in Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science, an open science community connecting more than 350 federal employees across 60 federal government organizations. Through this initiative, she catalyzed and helped to shape Citizenscience.gov, a White House Memorandum, and a federal statute that advanced open and participatory science; this initiative received recognition as a finalist for the 2017 Ash Award by Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Dr. Shanley also co-lead the production of the NASEM consensus report Precise Geodetic Infrastructure: National Requirements for a Shared Resource, which resulted in a doubling of federal investments in our nation’s geodetic infrastructure. 

Dr. Shanley has briefed and advised numerous governmental and scientific organizations in the U.S. and abroad, including the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the National Science & Technology Council, the U.S. Group on Earth Observations, the White House Senior Steering Committee on Big Data, the White House NITRD SEW Coordinating Group on Social Computing, the U.S. Interagency Arctic Research Committee; Alberta Environment & Parks (Canada), CSIRO (Australia), OECD (Paris), and various organizations within the United Nations. Her work has been profiled by high-impact media outlets including the White House Blog, Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, Politico, The National Journal, The Atlantic Wire, Vice, C-SPAN, The French Associated Press, and the Canadian Broadcasting Company. Dr. Shanley holds a Ph.D. in Geographic Information Science and satellite remote sensing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Publications

• Served as instigator and co-Chair of the Program Committee for the Computing Research Association/Computing Community Consortium’s workshop and report Grand Challenges for the Convergence of Computational and Citizen Science Research

Selected Honors & Awards

• The Federal Citizen Science and Crowdsourcing Initiative, which Dr. Shanley co-founded and co-led, was selected as a finalist for the Roy and Lila Ash Award for Public Engagement in Government by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University 
• Early Career Alumni Award, Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison 
• White House Presidential Innovation Fellow 
• AAAS Congressional Science Fellow in the US Senate
• Invited speaker, Science Foo Camp & Social Science Foo Camp 
• Ford Foundation Fellow 
• Recognized by UW-Madison Physics Faculty for Excellence in Teaching 
• Paul Schwartz Award for Excellence in Physics, FSU Physics Department

Selected Leadership Activities

• President, ICSI Board of Trustees (2021 – present)
• AI GRID Ambassador (2024 – present)
• Member, Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Data & Knowledge Working Group (2018 – present)
• Member, NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center Advisory Board
• Member, Scientific Council for the NASA Consortium for the Valuation of Applications Benefits Linked to Earth Science, Resources for the Future
• Member, Board of Trustees, US ICOMOS of the International Committee of Monuments and Sites
• Member, Board of Advisors, IEEE Indigenous Data Sovereignty Working Group
• Member, Board of Advisors, Horizon 2020 Big Data Public Private Partnerships Program of the EU Big Data Value Association
• Conference Program Committee Member and Co-Chair, Research Track, Southern Data Science Conference
• Co-chair, Group on Earth Observations Law & Policy subgroup
• Co-chair, Group on Earth Observations Citizen Science Community Activity (GEO-CITSCI) 
• Founder and Co-Chair, US Federal Community of Practice on Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science (FedCCS)
• Member, Board of Directors, Citizen Science Association
• Member, Board of Directors, Public Invention
• Member, Advisory Board of the Macrosystems Great Lakes Ecological Observing Network (GLEON) Research Coordination Network
• Member, Board of Advisors, PBS Series The Cloud & The Crowd: Citizen Science, Big Data & Mobile Revolution
• Member, Board of Advisors, Zooniverse.org

Areas of Expertise

• Spatial AI (Mapping, Localization, and Environmental Perception)
• Remote Sensing, Satellite Imaging, and Earth Observation
• Security And Privacy
• Human-Centered Computing
• Collaborative Systems, Social Computing, and CSCW
• Technology Policy, Standards, and Global Governance
• Societal Impacts of AI, Automation, and Robotics
• Open Science And Open Source
• Collaborative Platforms, Citizen Science, and Crowdsourcing
• Open Licensing, Governance, and Sustainability of Projects

ICSI Activity