GEOINFORMATICS CURRICULA AND CAREERS IN THE CONTEXT OF 21ST CENTURY DATA SCIENCE

When the Informatics revolution began again a little more than 10 years ago (longer for bio-informatics) geosciences (or Earth and Space Sciences) was paying attention via international attention from the Electronic Geophysical Year (eGY) and related endeavours (IPY, IYPE, IHY). The research agenda was in the spotlight, or moreso what geoinformatics, cast in emergent escience or cyber-infrastructures, could benefit from was the main focus of attention and funding. At the time almost all "Xinformatics" efforts were novel in their discipline or traditionally defined. Geoinformatics was bound to "geography, cartography, geosciences locations" (Wikipedia). However, a broader research and education agenda was clearly needed. Also at the time, a much more cross-discipline field; data science was also emerging. In this presentation, we relate the development, delivery and assessment of informatics, data science and their specializations into geosciences undertaken at RPI over the last nine years. We conclude with a longitudinal view of the impacts on geoinformatics career paths in the 21st century.