Deputy Director for Informatics at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) in Copenhagen, Donald Hobern, has been appointed the inaugural Director of the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA).

Mr Donald Hobern: developing an online encyclopaedia of Australian biodiversity

Mr Donald Hobern is developing tools to deliver a flexible online encyclopaedia of biodiversity.

• 5 August 2010 | Updated 14 October 2011

• Current activities
• Background
• Academic qualifications

Current activities

Mr Donald Hobern is the Director for the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA). This project aims to deliver information systems to integrate information about all Australian species of plants, animals and microorganisms to support research, education and decision-making. The ALA will launch its first public web tools in late 2010.

ALA is a partnership between:

• CSIRO
• Australian Museum
• Museum Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
• Queensland Museum, Brisbane, Australia
• Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery
• University of Adelaide, South Australia
• Southern Cross University, Australia
• Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Australia (DAFF)
• Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, Australia (DEWHA)
• Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria (CHAH)
• Council of Heads of Australian Faunal Collections (CHAFC)
• Council of Heads of Australian Entomological Collections (CHAEC)
• Australian Microbial Resources Research Network.

Mr Hobern is also Chair of the Biodiversity Information Standards (Taxonomic Database Working Group - TDWG), the international organisation responsible for development of standards for exchange of biodiversity data.

He has been active since 2002 in many of the organisation’s working groups and has overseen a 30-month project funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to modernise TDWG’s processes and data architecture.

Background

In 1982, Mr Hobern won the Marjoribanks Scholarship to study Classics at Christ Church, Oxford, England. He focussed on classical and modern philosophy and Indo-European linguistics.

Upon leaving university, Mr Hobern joined IBM (United Kingdom) Laboratories in Hursley, England as a software developer.

In 1999, he moved to Auckland, New Zealand, where he was again employed by IBM, as an e-Business Solutions Architect working as lead designer for web-based software applications. He served as architect for the development of a locally-based internet e-commerce marketplace and designed and led the implementation of a web-based health and safety management system.

Mr Hobern's technical experience includes work with:

• object-oriented programming
• databases
• web servers
• user interfaces
• distributed architecture.

Mr Hobern also has extensive experience programming in a range of languages, including:

• Java
• C
• C++
• XML.

While working for IBM, Mr Hobern continued to develop his interest in natural history. He has participated in a number of ornithological survey activities, including:

• national atlas projects in the United Kingdom
• common bird census work
• surveys of individual species for the British Trust for Ornithology.

Since 1997, he has also been an active lepidopterist and regularly operates a light trap to study moths.

In 2002, Mr Hobern took up the position of Programme Officer for Data Access and Database Interoperability with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) Secretariat, and subsequently became the GBIF Deputy Director for Informatics.

Mr Hobern's responsibilities at GBIF included adoption of data standards for biodiversity data and the establishment of a global architecture for information exchange.

He developed the XML-based architecture for the GBIF network and coordinated the implementation of the central data portal operated by the Secretariat.

Academic qualifications

Mr Hobern was awarded a:

• Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours from the University of Oxford, England in 1986.
• Master of Arts, also from the University of Oxford.

Learn more about the Atlas of Living Australia [external link].