Dr. Emil Horvath, Director

• Natural Resources Conservation Service, Fort Worth, TX

Background:

• Dr. Horvath was Director of the Information Technology and later the Natural Resources Inventory and Analysis Institutes of the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) in Fort Worth, Texas from 1997 to 2004. NRCS' mission is to provide leadership in a partnership effort to help people conserve, improve, and sustain our natural resources and environment on privately owned lands. Prior to becoming director of the institute, he led the Geospatial Database Branch and the GIS & Remote Sensing Laboratory at the NRCS National Cartography and Geospatial Center.

  Earlier in his career, Dr. Horvath joined the Department of Agriculture in 1989 as the National Headquarters GIS Laboratory Manager where he was active in the Corps of Engineers GRASS GIS community, a key predecessor to OGC. Dr. Emil Horvath was a founding director of the OpenGIS Foundation (from which OGC was formed) before becoming a director of OGC in 1994. He has been an active and dependable supporter of both OGF and OGC since 1991 when he participated in the original planning and funding efforts that resulted in the founding and organization of the OpenGIS project.  Prior to joining USDA-NRCS Dr. Horvath held various research positions in GIS and Remote Sensing with TRW and the Earth Resources Observation Systems Data Center of the USGS in Sioux Falls, SD.

  Dr. Horvath holds BS and MS degrees in Agronomy and Plant Physiology from Purdue University, where he did research for six years on satellite image processing for land use studies at the Laboratory for the Applications of Remote Sensing. He also holds a Soil Science and Photo Interpretation Diploma from ITC in the Netherlands, and a PhD in Soil & Water Sciences and Range Management from the University of Arizona.

   MIT/USDA-NRCS Collaborative Project