Stanford University Libraries Data Sharing Prizes for 2025

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June 3, 2025Tom Cramer, Rochelle Lundy, Amy Hodge, Amanda Whitmire, and Carrie Gao

An image panel with headshots of Kawano and Roberts, along with the Natural Capital Project logo.

We are pleased to announce the winners of the Stanford University Libraries Data Sharing Prizes for 2025. The winners were honored at the CORES Annual Symposium 2025: Connecting Open Science & Open Education on Tuesday, May 20, 2025. 

The Data Sharing Prizes recognize outstanding examples of impactful data sharing, and celebrate researchers who:

  • make their data available via an appropriate online repository,
  • exemplify disciplinary best practices for making their data FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable), and/or
  • advance others’ research by sharing their own data.

The Libraries are proud to offer these awards in support of CORES, the Stanford Center for Open and REproducible Science. Nominations are made each spring and awards are announced in conjunction with the CORES Annual Symposium. 

2025 Awards

Ayako Kawano

Headshot of Ayako Kawano

Ph.D. Candidate

Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources

Ayako’s ORCID iD (Open Researcher and Contributor iD)

In her research, Ph.D candidate Ayako Kawano examines the impact analysis of air pollution on population health and climate change in low- and middle-income countries using remote sensing data and machine learning methods. She has recently published a long-term dataset of daily fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations across India, which is publicly available on Zenodo, to support public health research in regions where air quality data remain sparse. Downloaded over 1000 times since its release in January 2025, the dataset has been applied in interdisciplinary research to examine socioeconomic inequalities in pollution exposure, to assess the effectiveness of India’s National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), and to identify locations for expanding the national monitoring network, proving to be a highly valuable resource for both scientific inquiry and policy evaluation.  

“I am committed to open, equitable, and reproducible science that advances research in regions where environmental monitoring remains limited,” says Ayako. “I am especially grateful to Professor Marshall Burke and my amazing co-authors for their guidance and support throughout this project.”

Highlighted dataset

High-Quality Daily PM2.5 Datasets for India at 10 km Resolution

Associated publication

Improved daily PM2.5 estimates in India reveal inequalities in recent enhancement of air quality

David S. Roberts

Headshot of David S. Roberts

Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the Bertozzi Lab

Department of Chemistry and Sarafan ChEM-H 

David’s ORCID iD (Open Researcher and Contributor iD)

As a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the Bertozzi Lab, David develops innovative chemical biology and bioanalytical methods to investigate the cell surface in the context of cancer. As extensive sampling is fundamental to his approaches, his research generates large volumes of omics data. In addition to data sharing from his own projects, David also promotes and enables data sharing by others in his field: he recently authored a proteomics methods primer that includes detailed guidance on reproducibility and data sharing and has created discipline-specific open source software, shared open access methodologies, and mentored others in data sharing.

“The omics community still lags behind other fields in terms of data sharing,” David comments. “Robust data sharing and reuse will be required to make major progress in this field and to enable advanced computational methods, such as machine learning, to become a useful tool for proteomics data. I hope to continue my efforts throughout my scientific career.”

Highlighted datasets

The Natural Capital Project

Headshot of Dave Fischer, Emily Marie Pavia, and James Douglass
From left to right: Team members Dave Fisher, Emily Pavia, and James Douglass.

Dave Fisher, Senior Software Engineer, The Natural Capital Project

Emily Pavia, Data Manager & Data Scientist, The Natural Capital Project

James Douglass, Software Architect, The Natural Capital Project

The Natural Capital Project website

The Natural Capital Project is a Stanford-based partnership among interdisciplinary researchers, professionals, and leaders around the world that supports nature-informed decision-making about policies and investments. The project is led by Faculty Director Gretchen Daily, and relies on the work of many staff and researchers. In particular, team members James Douglass, Emily Pavia, and Dave Fisher have made significant contributions to impactful data sharing. James and Emily spearheaded the development of the Natural Capital Data Hub, an online platform that launched in March 2025, which centralizes access to ecosystem services data from a variety of open sources. Data sharing on the Hub is enabled by GeoMetaMaker, a Python library created by Dave to facilitate creation of human- and machine-readable metadata for geospatial data. Together, their efforts make it possible for many more researchers and policy makers around the world to easily access and reuse data that supports informed decision-making.

Highlighted resources

Past winners

2024 Data Sharing Prizes winners