Panel Members

David Stinchcomb, MA, MS

Senior Health Research Analyst, Westat, Inc.

Dave Stinchcomb is a senior health research analyst with 30 years' experience in health informatics, cancer surveillance, geospatial analysis, and computer systems development. Since joining the Westat staff in January 2011, he has served as the Project Director for two geo-spatial projects with the USDA's Food and Nutrition Service, the Project Director for a Comparative Effectiveness Research project with AHRQ and the IHS, and the technical lead for two projects with the National Cancer Institute.

Before joining Westat, he served as Chief of NCI's Surveillance Systems Branch and Director of the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program. In this role, he was responsible for the design and direction of activities related to the collection, processing, and dissemination of national cancer surveillance data and directed, developed, and implemented methods for geospatial data analysis and dissemination. He has published and presented widely on the use of geospatial technologies in public health research and surveillance and co-authored a chapter on geocoding at cancer registries in Geocoding Health Data (CRC Press, 2008). Mr. Stinchcomb has a MS in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley and an MA in Geography from Texas State University.

Dan Gibbons

Senior Product Manager, NAVTEQ

As a Senior Product Manager, Dan is responsible for helping to support NAVTEQ's strategic direction regarding GIS products and map content for the Enterprise space. Previous contributions include bringing NAVTEQ Enterprise related products to market and supporting and maintaining relationships with key partners. In his role as Product Manager, Dan works closely with NAVTEQ's Product Marketing, Sales, and Operations teams.

Dan, a NAVTEQ veteran has served in a wide variety of roles during his 17 plus years of tenure at NAVTEQ. Dan has a well-rounded background and experience in all aspects of NAVTEQ operations gained from having worked in field operations, data collection, technical customer support, and product management. Dan holds a BA degree in Geography from University of California at Santa Barbara.

Donald Cooke

Community Maps Evangelist, Esri

Donald Cooke has worked with digital mapping and geospatial technologies for 45 years, starting as a researcher in the New Haven Census Use Study. He was a member of the census team that developed the Dual Independent Map Encoding (DIME) method of computerizing street maps. The DIME innovation led directly to the nationwide Census Bureau TIGER files, which constitute the most complete public domain street database in the world. In 1980, Cooke founded Geographic Data Technology (GDT), the first private company to produce and license digital maps as a product. From 1986 to 1988, GDT was a major contractor to the Census Bureau in creating the TIGER database; in 2004, Tele Atlas bought GDT for $100,000,000.

At GDT and Tele Atlas (now TomTom), Cooke served in many roles, most recently as chief scientist. In the 1990s, he performed pioneering work on GPS and digital map accuracy and was first to adapt the new Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) map standard, National Standard for Spatial Data Accuracy (NSSDA), to digital street maps. He managed a recent TomTom project to determine accuracy of consumer GPS units and prove the viability of crowdsourcing road alignments for personal navigation devices.

Cooke has written a wide range of publications, from monthly columns in GIS magazines to Fun with GPS, published by Esri Press. He was a member of the National Research Council's Board of Earth Science Resources on Mapping Science Committee in the early 1990s and currently serves on the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Panel to Review the 2010 Census. In 2007, he received the Esri Lifetime Achievement Award to complement the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association's (URISA) Horwood Award and election to the URISA Hall of Fame. He is a 1967 graduate of Yale University and studied civil engineering systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Ama A. Danso, BS, MS, PMP

Assistant Division Chief, Address Software, Geography Division, US Census Bureau

Ama Danso is the Assistant Division Chief (ADC) for Address Software, Geography Division since May 2011 with almost 20 years' experience in IT management and systems engineering from both the private and federal sectors. In her current role, Ama's responsibilities include management of the US Census Bureau's national Master Address File (MAF) data systems and software development related to address maintenance, address products, batch and interactive geocoding, and matching systems in support of the decennial and other statistical programs.

Before joining the federal government, Ama worked for 13 years as a Program Manager for Science Applications International Corporations (SAIC), an IT Services contractor supporting 4 different divisions in the Bureau. In the Geography Division (GEO), Ama supported the Spatial Data Systems and Database Management. She managed integrated project teams for the MAF/TIGER system in support of GEO's spatial, geographic, cartographic, and address data products generation.

Ama has a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University Whiting School of Engineering, Baltimore, Maryland, a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Siena College, Loudonville, NY and she is a certified Project Management Institute (PMI)/Project Management Professional (PMP) since 2004.

Mark Greninger

Geographic Information Officer (GIO), County of Los Angeles

Mark Greninger graduated from Stanford University in 1996 with a degree in Environmental Geology, but quickly became passionate about GIS and has been in the field since then, starting with command line Arc/Info. Greninger began his GIS career by building an Enterprise GIS System for the Environmental Protection Agency in San Francisco. After the EPA, he moved to Los Angeles County, where he has been for over 10 years.

Greninger is the County's first GIO, a position he has held for the past 5 years. As GIO, he oversees the development, governance, and activities of the County Enterprise GIS Program and Enterprise GIS infrastructure. Greninger leads collaborative efforts with other jurisdictions to acquire region-wide datasets, and develop standards recommendations for adoption and implementation, in order to ensure the deployment and effective use of geography and geospatial technologies for the County's 100,000 employees and 10 million residents.

Jon Sperling, Ph.D., GISP

Senior Researcher, Geographic Information Analysis, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) – Office of Policy Development & Research

Jon Sperling manages and implements research on Geographic Information and Analysis at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R). Jon has designed and led many innovative geospatial, addressing, and data integration efforts in coordination with local and state governments and the academic research community and has authored and reviewed several articles on geographic and statistical issues. Dr. Sperling has been involved with geocoding research and practice since taking a course on computer applications in urban planning at Columbia University in the early 1980's. Since then he was involved in the initial building of the Census TIGER database which helped jumpstart the GIS "revolution", efforts to better integrate the nation's TIGER database and Master Address File, advancing the vision of an enterprise Geocoding Service Center at HUD, and working with a university partner to develop geotagging applications that extract, query, and visualize textual references to geographic locations. One of Jon's priorities at HUD is to enhance and ensure data quality, understanding, and consistency across program areas to better support research, policy, and emerging place-based applications.