Dr. Kirsten Elger was highlighted as one of four women in celebration of this year’s Women’s History Month. The International GNSS Service (IGS) joined the global community by profiling women in the IGS community who are making contributions to global geodesy for the greater good.

The tribute from the IGS website:

Dr. Kirsten Elger

Geologist, repository manager GFZ Data Services, data enthusiast, chief editor Earth System Science Data (ESSD) (@ESSD_journal)
GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences – Library and Information Services (@gfz-potsdam)
Potsdam, Germany 

“As trained geologist and data person, I see myself as a newbie in GNSS and other geodetic disciplines with the aim to make their important data and their originators more visible in our digital world. I am consulting geodesists in data publication and documentation related topics and am learning a lot about different geodetic techniques in the same time. This enables me to think outside the box and successively gain a broader understanding of system Earth and the different approaches to understand it.”

Originally trained as a geologist with a PhD in structural geology, Elger is head of GFZ Data Services (a research data repository for the Geosciences, hosted at GFZ) where she found an ideal place to combine her geosciences background with data management expertise. Since 2014, she further developed the data repository into an internationally recognized place for the publication of curated and citable research data for the geosciences and the unique identification of physical samples with International Generic Sample Numbers IGSN. GFZ Data Services is offering data publication services for data and research software of individual researchers as well as for specific communities in the Earth sciences, including for several services of the International Association for Geodesy (IAG), namely ICGEM, IGETS, ISG and the International Real-time Magnetic Observatory Network INTERMAGNET.

Beyond this, she is Chief executive editor for Copernicus’ data journal Earth System Science Data, chair of the “Working Group on digital object identifier (DOI) for geodetic data” of the Global Geodetic Observing System (GGOS), and member of the DataCite Metadata Working Group.

Women’s History Month

Recently, many countries/regions and organizations have extended celebrations of International Women’s Day throughout the entire month of March, now known as Women’s History Month (#WHM).

See here for all IGS-highlighted women in March 2023.