Scott Davidoff uses the methods of Human-Computer Interaction, Data Visualization, Data Science and Human-Centered Design to investigate the big scientific research questions in Astrobiology, Planetary and Earth Science. He has introduced novel ways to interrogate data from XRF and reflectance spectra, to carbon cycle, ocean vent, and reconstructed 3D terrain. He also looks to optimize performance and trust in human teams that operate high autonomy single- and multi-robot systems.
His spectroscopy analysis platform PIXLISE, with embedded anomaly and multi-detector capabilities, is used in daily Perseverance Mars Rover operations and directly contributed to discoveries published in Science. His work has won multiple NASA Software of the Year Awards and NASA Honor Awards. His research papers have been published at top ACM and IEEE venues, winning best papers at KDD, and DIS. He also has organized the ACM CHI and DIS conferences, and co-founded SpaceCHI. He also transforms how organizations solve technical problems, inventing Speed Dating for Design and other problem-solving techniques.
Previously, Scott was Principal Research Scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He has PhD, MS and MHCI degrees from Carnegie Mellon University, and a BA from Duke University.