Researcher Spotlight
Jeffrey Kwang
Jeffrey Kwang is a graduate student studying fluvial geomorphology in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering under Professor Gary Parker. He studies how landscapes evolve over geologic time by using both physically-scaled and numerical models. His goal is to determine and understand the fundamental processes that are necessary to create the structure of landscapes and drainage networks that we see here on Earth.
What do you see as the primary benefit to you of archiving your data in a repository?
The Illinois Data Bank helped me organize and annotate my data sets so that researchers in and out of my field could use and understand my data. Many publications are now requiring researchers to upload their data to repositories and make their data easily accessible instead of writing, "Our data can be obtained by contacting the authors." However, just because the data is easily downloaded, does not mean that the data is useful. I uploaded my data to the Illinois Data Bank not just to fill a requirement but to make sure that my data was publicly available, annotated, and useful.