ACL: Advent of Complex Life - MIT Astrobiology Team

David Patterson
Email: dpatterson at mbl dot edu
Institution: Marine Biological Laboratory
Telephone: 508-289-7260
Fax: 508-457-4727
Address: Marine Biological Laboratory
Woods Hole MA 02543 USA

David J. (Paddy) Patterson is a taxonomist with an academic history at Bristol University (England) and the University of Sydney (Australia). He currently leads of the informatics component of the (Encyclopedia of Life) based at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole.

An advocate of the argument that taxonomists are custodians of biodiversity information, he has been trying to embed taxonomic practices and thinking into the design and operations of informatics tools that manage biodiversity information. He has previously been associated with the Astrobiology program that focused on the (early history of life). The project led to the web-site (micro*scope), which was the first application of the names-based infrastructure that characterizes his approach to information management. It was unusual in that it was designed to work with distributed data and to be a participatory environment - in many ways it was the precursor of the Encyclopedia of Life project.