Celebrating Lesley Wyborn: Recipient of the 2025 Ian McHarg medal
Dr Lesley Wyborn (right) receiving the 2025 Ian McHarg medal at the EGU meeting in Vienna last night. The award is being presented by Dr Jens Klump (CSIRO/AuScope) and Dr. Kirsten Elger (GFZ Potsdam). Credit: Rebecca Farrington
For decades, Lesley Wyborn has pioneered the fields of data management, eResearch and informatics, transforming how researchers access, share, and collaborate on geoscience data. This month, the global Earth science community celebrated Lesley as she received the prestigious Ian McHarg medal at the 2025 European Geosciences Union meeting in Austria.
The medal is awarded to individuals who have significantly advanced the application of information technology in geosciences. It recognises Lesley’s lifetime contributions as a champion of ethical data use, data standards, and findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) data.
Lesley said she was surprised to have received the award. While her background is in geoscience, she said growing up in the pre-digital age is what made her ‘have a foot in both camps’ when it came to data science.
“When I went to university, computers were something down in the Physics research department. I didn’t start playing with desktop computers until probably the early 70s. But as the technology came in, I started to use it. I liked combining data sets and seeing the bigger picture,” she said.
Throughout her career, Lesley has played an instrumental role in shaping data use, standards, and publishing. She has been the chair of the Australian Academy of Science’s National Committee for Data in Science, co-chair of the Coalition for Publishing Data in the Earth and Space Sciences (COPDESS), and a member of the American Geophysical Union Data Management Advisory Board.
She is an Honorary Professor at the Research School of Earth Sciences at the Australian National University (ANU), has published numerous high-impact papers, and has been the recipient of many awards, including the 2021 Australian Society of Exploration Geophysicists Grahame Sands Memorial Award, the 2019 US Martha Maiden Lifetime Achievement for Service to the Earth Science - Information Community Award, and the Geological Society of America’s Outstanding Contributions in Geoinformatics award in 2015.
As the latest addition to her long list of accolades, this Ian McHarg medal reflects her influence, not only in Australia but across the globe, as a highly regarded and respected member of the geoscience informatics community.
“I’m amazed by Lesley’s generosity and boundless energy. She brings deep expertise, an insatiable curiosity, and remarkable patience to every conversation,” said Dr Rebecca Farrington, AuScope’s Director of Research Data Systems. “It’s incredibly fitting to see her achievements recognised at this level. Her work has consistently pushed boundaries, often accomplished against the odds, and has reshaped our field.”
Beyond her contributions to data management, Lesley has played a key role in supporting Australia’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS)-funded organisations, including AuScope, the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) and the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC). With her cross-disciplinary background, Lesley brings unique perspectives that build on the synergy of these 3 NCRIS facilities.
“With NCI, it’s big data and machine readability of data, and with the ARDC, it’s things like vocabularies and the infrastructure for managing data. AuScope gives me the opportunity to go back to my roots and bring the Earth sciences together, since I’m a geochemist by training,” said Lesley.
As she receives the Ian McHarg medal this month, we celebrate Lesley’s lifetime of achievements and her ongoing efforts that continue to shape the future of geoscience and beyond.
Congratulations, Lesley, from all of us at AuScope.
AUTHORS
A conversation between Dr Cintya Dharmayanti, Scientell and Dr Lesley Wyborn from … AuScope, NCI, ARDC, etc….