STANDING COMMITTEE ON
DATA

Dr. Tim Ahern was the Director of Data Services for the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) for 32 years. IRIS is an NSF funded not-for-profit corporation that supports the global research infrastructure in seismology. He retired in 2019 but continues as Director of Data Services, Emeritus.
He earned a BS degree in Physics at Whitworth University and a M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Geophysics at the University of British Columbia. Following his graduate work he joined the staff of Standard Oil of Indiana’s Amoco Production Company’s Research Center as a Senior Research Scientist. His research focused on the development of real time marine seismic processing systems for use in oil exploration. In 1987 he began his career with IRIS where he led the development of the IRIS Data Management Center the primary node in IRIS’ Data Services directorate.
He served as the Secretary of the International Federation of Digital Seismograph Networks (FDSN), a commission of IASPEI for 12 years and also acted as the chair of several working groups within the FDSN. He was active for many years with international efforts in seismology related to standards development and coordinating international efforts.
Since retiring, Dr. Ahern has remained active in several national and international projects including the development of school seismometer networks, the development of metadata standards for legacy seismic data, serves on the Scientific Program Committee of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Science and Technology Conferences, and serves as the chair of the Standing Committee on Data within EarthScope-Oceans.

Joel D Simon is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Geosciences at Princeton University, where he also received his PhD in Geophysics in 2020. He is a member of the Standing Committee on Data for the international consortium EarthScope-Oceans which oversees a drifting array of fifty MERMAID floats. His research pairs hydroacoustics with global seismology to address questions concerning the structure of the Earth, and he is particularly interested in signal processing techniques useful to extract signals from noisy time series.

During his professional career Dr. Christoph Waldmann has built up an expertise in ocean technology and data management. He has worked as a group leader at the Center for Marine Environmental in Bremen, Germany, for over 25 years. MARUM is the first and only Research Faculty at the University of Bremen and home to the Cluster of Excellence The Ocean Floor – Earth's Uncharted Interface as well as other national and international research projects like IODP.
He earned an Intermediate Diploma degree in Physics at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, and a Diploma and Ph.D. in Applied Physics at the University of Kiel, Germany, in 1985. After a time as a DFG Postdoc Fellow which allowed him to work as a guest investigator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Mass., in 1987 he started working at the Alfred-Wegener-Institute for Polar Research. His research focused on the development and assessment of ocean density measurement methods. In 1996 he began his career with MARUM where he led the development of autonomous operating underwater platforms for long-term deployments.
Waldmann has been a member of the IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society since 1986 and is now serving as the Chair of the OES Standing Committee on Standards. Since 2018 he has served as a Member of the Advisory Board of the NOAA/IOOS program QARTOD. He is also a member of the WMO Expert Team on Measurement Uncertainties and was involved in a number of international projects that aimed at standards development and coordination of international efforts.

Yong Yu is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Geology, China Earthquake Administration. He earned his Ph.D. in Geophysics in 2016 under the guidance of Professor Yongshun John Chen at Peking University. Prior to his current position, he served as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Assistant Research Professor at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in Shenzhen, China. He played a significant role in the deployment of MERMAID floats and has been responsible for the management and processing of MERMAID float data at SUSTech ever since. His research primarily focuses on the detection of deep Earth structure and tectonic conditions using seismic methods.