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Dr. Barbara Buttenfield is a Professor Emerita of Geography at the University of Colorado where she is also the Director of the Meridian Research Lab which develops GIS applications and explores algorithm design and testing to advance knowledge about GIScience. She has had an illustrious and influential career in cartography and GIScience and continues contributing to the field while enjoying emerita status. She has had a long-standing focus on data generalizing and modeling, and she has made significant contributions to multi-scale mapping and database design, perhaps most notably through her continuing Research Faculty affiliation with the USGS Center for Excellence in Geospatial Information Science (CEGIS). Dr. Buttenfield’s diverse interests also include terrain modeling, dasymetric modeling, representations of uncertainly, error/accuracy assessment of spatial data, and graphical interface design and usability and evaluation, among other topics of relevance in cartography and GIScience. She has hundreds of publications in a variety of outlets; given and been invited to give presentations nationwide and internationally; won numerous awards for both her research and teaching; been an investigator on research grants earning millions of dollars; served as the lead and member on numerous national and institutional committees; and mentored scores of students, many of whom went on to hold prominent positions in academic, government, and the private sector.

In addition to her many academic and professional accomplishments, Dr. Buttenfield has been a leader in CaGIS and other professional societies.  Her contributions to CaGIS (and previously the ACA) span more than two decades and include serving as a board member from 1990-1992 and again from 1994-1997 while she was president of the society from 1995-1996. The Society and its journal were shifting from cartography to geographic information systems to GIScience. In 1992, she surveyed ACA members to determine their interest in GIS, and she published the results in the society journal. In 1997, she was elected as an ACSM Fellow. She served on a Strategic Planning Committee from 2004-2005 to develop a plan for the Society to be more inclusive of geographic information systems and science. She served as the associate editor of the Cartography and Geographic Information Systems journal from 1993-1996. She has been on the editorial board of the CaGIS journal since 1991. In addition, she has served on the Program Committees for AutoCarto every year since 2010.

Dr. Buttenfield has also been integrally involved in the ICA, UCGIS, NACIS, and AAG. For the ICA, she has served on the Scientific Program Committee for the International Cartographic Conferences and workshops of the ICA Commission on Generalization and Multiple Representations since 2011. For her service to the organization, she was elected as a  of UCGIS and was awarded its inaugural   in 2001. In 2020, she was honored with the  

And last but certainly not least, Dr. Buttenfield is also an advocate for women in science, as is evidenced by these activities and achievements: From 2017 to 2021, she was a Project Director of the Training and Retaining Leaders in STEM (TRELIS-GS) project mainly funded through the NSF to address the low level of participation by women in geographic information science and technology; In 2010, she was elected to membership in the Society of Women Geographers; In 2013, she was one of nine women cartographers whose career is highlighted in Map Worlds: History of Women in Cartography by WC van den Hoonard, Wilfrid Laurier University Press.