WASHINGTON, Aug. 31, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Radiant Earth Foundation, a leader in geospatial and artificial intelligence data and applications, announces the appointment of Jed Sundwall as the new Executive Director. Jed joins the Radiant Earth team on September 1, and will work with Hamed Alemohammad, current Executive Director, until the end of October 2022. As of November 1, 2022, Hamed will become an advisor to Radiant Earth, and joins the Board of Directors.
Jed Sundwall comes to Radiant Earth from Amazon Web Services (AWS), where he has been building AWS’ global sustainability engagement team for the last year. Jed joined AWS in 2014 and created and led the Open Data Program, which has democratized access to over 100 petabytes of data. The initiatives he spearheaded to make data more accessible, including various geospatial datasets like Landsat, helped inspire ecosystems for efficient sharing and use of satellite imagery and climate models.
Over the last three years, Radiant Earth has significantly increased its impact by establishing Radiant MLHub as the first open-access library for geospatial training data and machine learning models. Jed joins the team when Radiant MLHub is gaining much traction across the community. There is a growing need for training datasets and benchmarks for issues around the climate crisis, food (in)security, air pollution, and water and sanitation. The high-quality open datasets on Radiant MLHub can enable innovative and diverse machine learning applications to address these issues.
“Jed is a well-known, dynamic leader with deep experience working at the intersection of open data and sustainability. His energy, enthusiasm, and passion for helping people solve our most challenging problems through the use of Earth observation data will be instrumental to the continued success of Radiant Earth and the growth of our community,” said Jerry Johnston, the Chair of Radiant Earth Board of Directors. “The Board is excited to work with Jed as our new Executive Director and confident that the work of Radiant and Radiant MLHub will grow and thrive under his leadership.”
“Jed is a champion of open data, and I couldn’t think of a better person to lead Radiant moving forward,” said Hamed Alemohammad. “Radiant is a recognized and trusted brand across the geospatial sector. We have also been very successful in reaching out to a diverse user community and providing services to empower them with knowledge and tools to address local, regional and global challenges. Democratization of data and applications is the core mission of our organization, and Jed has years of experience establishing and leading similar programs. He is a visionary leader, and I look forward to supporting him and the team in my new role.”
"I'm honored to serve Radiant Earth's community and build upon the great foundation established by Hamed and the Board," said Jed Sundwall. "We live in a golden age of access to Earth observation data, and I'm convinced that we've only just started to see the impact of the combination of Earth observation data, cloud computing, and machine learning. Radiant Earth is precisely the kind of neutral and trustworthy institution the world needs to ensure that critical data and tools are accessible to everyone working to solve our planet's greatest challenges. I look forward to expanding the Radiant Earth community as we work to better understand our world."
About Radiant Earth
Radiant Earth Foundation is a nonprofit corporation working to empower organizations and individuals with open ML and EO data, standards, and tools to address the world's most critical international development challenges. Radiant Earth fosters collaboration through a cloud-based open geospatial training data library, Radiant MLHub. Radiant also supports an ecosystem of practitioners to develop standards, expand interoperability around ML on Earth observation, and provide information and training to help advance the capacity of those working in the global sector using ML and Earth observation. Visit us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Medium.
Contact Radiant Earth
Louisa Nakanuku-Diggs
+1 – 202 – 596 – 3603
Louisa@radiant.earth
