Keynote Speakers
The PEARC17 keynote on Tuesday, July 11, will be presented by Paula Stephan, professor of economics, Georgia State University and a research associate, National Bureau of Economic Research. Stephan’s talk, “How Economics Shapes Science,” will focus on the effects of incentives and costs on U.S. campuses.
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Paul Morin, founder and director of the Polar Geospatial Center, an NSF science and logistics support center at the University of Minnesota, will present a keynote session on Wednesday, July 12, titled “Mapping the Poles with Petascale.” This is the compelling story of a small NSF-funded team from academia joining with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and Blue Waters to create the largest ever topographic mapping project.
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​Paula Stephan
Georgia State University
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Paula Stephan is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the Board of Reviewing Editors, Science. Science Careers named Stephan its first “Person of the Year” in December 2012. Stephan has published numerous articles in such journals as The American Economic Review, The Journal of Economic Literature, Management Science, Nature, Organization Science, Research Policy and Science. Her book, How Economics Shapes Science, was published by Harvard University Press. Her research has been supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Science Foundation. Stephan serves on the National Academies Committee on the Next Generation of Researchers Initiative and the Research Council of The State University of New York (SUNY) System. In the recent past she served on the National Research Council’s Board on Higher Education and Workforce and the Committee to Review the State of the Postdoctoral Experience for Scientists and Engineers. She served on the National Advisory General Medical Sciences Council, National Institutes of Health 2005-2009 and also served on the Advisory Committee of the Social, Behavioral, and Economics Program, National Science Foundation, 2001-2008 (CEOSE, 2001-2003). She has held visiting positions at the Max Planck Institute, Munich, Germany; KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium; Harvard University; International Center for Economic Research, Turin, Italy; and the Wizzenschaftszentrum für Social Forschung, Berlin, Germany. Stephan received her undergraduate degree in economics from Grinnell College and her PhD from the University of Michigan.
​Paul Morin
Polar Geospatial Center
Paul Morin is Founder and Director of the Polar Geospatial Center, an NSF science and logistics support center at the University of Minnesota. Morin leads a team of two dozen responsible for imaging, mapping, and monitoring the Earth’s polar regions for the National Science Foundation’s Division of Polar Programs. Morin is the liaison between the National Science Foundation and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s commercial imagery program. Before founding PGC, Morin was at the National Center for Earth-Surface Dynamics at the University of Minnesota, and he has worked at the University of Minnesota since 1987. Morin serves as the National Academy of Sciences-appointed U.S. representative to the Standing Committee on Antarctic Geographic Information under the Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research (i.e., the Antarctic Treaty System). One of his current projects is ArcticDEM, a White House initiative to produce a high-resolution, time-dependent elevation model of the Arctic using Blue Waters. Morin’s professional interests include mapping areas of the Earth that are difficult to reach, scientific visualization and using scientific art for formal and informal education. Morin has dozens of publications in a variety of fields including remote sensing, geoscience education, the carbon cycle, and scientific visualization. In 2015 Morin was awarded an honorary doctorate at Colorado College for his outstanding contributions in the geoscience field. Morin’s art/visualizations have been in numerous publications including National Geographic, Nature and Wired. He has contributed to the BBC/David Attenborough production “Frozen Planet” and is spearheading an effort with Google to improve polar geospatial data, imagery and Street View in Google Earth and Maps. Morin is coauthor of the number one selling introductory geology textbook “Exploring Geology” and the newly released “Exploring Earth Science.” Morin was born and raised in Minnesota and lives in St. Paul with his wife and two children.
