The POLDER working group, which is building tools for federating search of polar metadata, has a new co-chair in Chantelle Verhey, from the World Data System’s International Technology Office. POLDER is a working group of SOOS, the Arctic Data Committee, and the Standing Committee on Antarctic Data Management, all of which need search tools to help scientists find data stored in a wide variety of data centres across the globe. Chantelle replaces SOOS’ Data Officer, Pip Bricher, who was a founding co-chair of POLDER. POLDER is developing a best practice guide to help data centres crosswalk their metadata to a common format, so that they can be federated into a central search tool.

Chantelle is a Research Associate for the World Data System International Technology Office, and works part-time as a Data Specialist for Canada’s Polar Data Catalogue. She has a Master of Science in Environmental Management degree from the University of Reading in the UK, and was dedicated to researching forest fire trends in the Canadian Boreal Forest. Now, she is combining her education and work experience to help polar communities’ initiatives toward semantic interoperability.