Dr. Tasha Snow is an early-career scientist who has emerged as a prominent advocate and change maker for open science in the cryosphere research community. Dr. Snow's open science journey began with research involving diverse data types and collaborating across disciplines, including cryospheric science, oceanography and machine learning. This interdisciplinary research exposed major gaps in existing research infrastructure and computing practices across research groups, motivating Dr. Snow to co-found and lead CryoCloud.

CryoCloud is a JupyterHub research environment that allows users to access data and computing resources in a variety of coding languages from any device with an internet connection. CryoCloud operates as a partnership between cryosphere researchers and the International Interactive Computing Collaboration (2i2c), a non-profit open-source cloud platform service provider for research and education. The model empowers researchers to communicate their infrastructure needs to cloud engineers, who in turn ensure stable, cost-effective and long-lasting systems. Dr. Snow, the CryoCloud team and 2i2c have curated CryoCloud with embedded tools useful for cryospheric researchers, but its underlying architecture is fully adaptable to other scientific communities.

Dr. Snow has successfully led seven workshops and trainings, onboarding more than 220 scientists onto CryoCloud. CryoCloud allows these researchers to transition their research workflows to the cloud by addressing technical barriers to entry and simplifying cost structures associated with cloud computing. Users can instantly access and stream cloud-based datasets that are now openly available as part of NASA’s Open-Source Science Initiative. Dr. Snow’s conceptualization and implementation of CryoCloud also bring together users across the broader cryosphere community, providing access to technology and resources that especially benefit early-career, marginalized or financially constrained individuals and communities. These efforts are breaking down barriers to inclusion and fostering scientific innovation and impact.

Under Dr. Snow's leadership, collaborative scientific practices are being transformed, establishing CryoCloud’s “cloud computing as a service” model as a potential blueprint for NASA's future scientific computing infrastructure. In addition to co-founding and leading CryoCloud, Dr. Snow actively promotes open-access publication, transparent and reproducible sharing of scientific outputs, and open-source tools to foster a culture of inclusivity and innovation in the scientific community. Dr. Snow’s vision and dedication make her a true pioneer and catalyst for progressing open science.

— Wilson Sauthoff
Colorado School of Mines
Golden, Colorado

— Joanna Millstein
Colorado School of Mines
Golden, Colorado

I am deeply honored to receive this open science recognition of a lifetime from AGU. AGU has been at the forefront of the burgeoning open science revolution, and the creation of this new award is a testament to their dedication. AGU inspires more open, accessible and impactful science on so many fronts, and my work in open science, especially in CryoCloud, has greatly benefited from AGU’s progress. Through my work I never dreamed I would receive recognition, so the prize really inspires and energizes me to do more. I find facilitating other scientists’ research to be deeply rewarding, and CryoCloud does so by harnessing both advanced technologies and the novel social innovations needed for communities to fully utilize the technologies. It has been an incredible journey in discovering those innovations and community building along the way. I believe CryoCloud has reached a critical mass where community-wide expertise has firmly established itself, fortifying every aspect of CryoCloud in ways I could not have achieved alone, thus creating an empowered self-sustaining community ecosystem. I hope that CryoCloud, along with many other exciting open science endeavors in our field, will help to illuminate community best practices that promote inclusivity; advance science; and save our communities money, time and expertise. None of this work was possible without the generous support of the NASA Transform to Open Science and Cryosphere programs and the ICESat-2 science team, who were willing to take a risk on our novel idea. I am very grateful to my nominators, Joanna Millstein and Wilson Sauthoff, for putting so much care into this wonderful application and into CryoCloud. Really, this award belongs to them and the entire CryoCloud team, who have invested their creativity and time into making CryoCloud successful. A special thank you to Waleed Abdalati, Matthew Siegfried, Fernando Pérez, James Colliander and Ted Scambos, who have served as my mentors through my career and modeled open, inclusive and welcoming scientific leadership in their respective fields. They have been incredible role models. I am sincerely grateful to the Colorado School of Mines for providing me with the launching point for my research and this open science endeavor. Thank you to my parents, LynnDee and Michael Snow, for supporting me in every goal I have set. Finally, I wish to appreciate my partner, Bryce Linn, who wholeheartedly supports my open science endeavors and similarly contributes to healthier open soil practices. Thank you!— Tasha Snow, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, Colorado