Kathleen Fontaine

Dr Kathleen Fontaine (Kathy) has been at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) since 2014, first as the Managing Director of the Research Data Alliance/US, and currently as a Sr. Research Scientist in the Tetherless World Constellation (TWC), and Adjunct Professor in the Information Technology and Web Science (ITWS) program.  She has developed and currently teaches a graduate-level course in all aspects of data policy, from ethics to sharing, and has developed an ethics unit for one of the graduate capstone courses in ITWS.  In addition, she is involved with ACM and IEEE efforts on AI and ethics. 

Before coming to RPI, Dr Fontaine spent over 25 years at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (early on as a contractor; most recently as a civil servant), having done a variety of work including data policy, spacecraft system trade studies, and Earth observations project and program work. Dr Fontaine has been extensively involved in several international and intergovernmental organizations whose focus was on open sharing of Earth observations data, and she continues to participate in the international Group on Earth Observations, representing ESIP in the Programme Board.