Dr. Pankajeshwara (Pankaj) Sharma was recently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Environment at the University of Auckland. His postdoctoral research is part of a larger National Science Challenges funded project called Ngā Rākau Taketake—Myrtle Rust and Kauri Dieback Research that focused on investigating the use of technology to protect Biodiversity (see outcomes provided at the end of this post). His PhD research at University of Otago explored a framework to mine decision making processes and the rationale behind decisions in open source software development communities. He focused on a qualitative, data-driven approach to understand how consensus decisions are made in the Python community project and then creating a semi-automatic framework that mines this information.
Pankaj is originally from Lautoka, Fiji. He received his BSc and MSc in Computing Science from University of the South Pacific. As a Lecturer at the University of Fiji for two and a half years, he has taught undergraduate and postgraduate computing courses. He has also worked in the industry for six years: as a software developer, database administrator and a business analyst at various public and private sector organisations. He currently lives in Auckland, New Zealand with his wife. In 2018, both graduated from Yoga teacher training (200hr Multistyle) from Trimurti Yoga Academy in Dunedin.
Outcomes from his recent post-doctoral fellowship:
In his postdoctoral fellowship, Pankaj has primarily been involved in research on data sovereignty and Maori biodiversity management data in Aotearoa NZ. This has resulted in two separate browser-based tools, which he developed and these have been reported in two papers.
Their first paper “MapSafe: A complete tool for achieving geospatial data sovereignty” (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/tgis.13094) describes how their browser-based tool (https://www.mapsafe.xyz) offers a complete approach for sovereign data owners to safeguard sensitive geospatial data by obfuscating, encrypting, and notarising it. Sovereign parties can first verify the encrypted dataset’s originality, decrypt, and then display it. These functions run client-side in the browser, meaning geospatial data never leaves the computer unprotected, presenting a completely trustless mechanism for sharing data. We believe this tool presents a key ingredient in geospatial data sovereignty. The second tool focuses on empowering Indigenous peoples to govern data about themselves, their territories, resources, and ways of life, collected by themselves or others https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/tgis.13153. Customised and novel implementations of each of the security functions (obfuscation, encryption, and notarisation) are integrated within GeoNode content management system and are made available through the browser permitting Indigenous peoples to safeguard and share these datasets themselves before storage on the cloud. The application was designed for the protection of Biodiversity Management Areas stewarded by the Māori people in Aotearoa New Zealand. A 4-minute video demonstrating the tool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aWbBVhRNRo&ab_channel=BioHeritageChallenge
Joining SI^NZ
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