David R. Shaw, PhD

Vice President for Research and Economic Development
Mississippi State University

David Shaw is the Vice President for Research and Economic Development at Mississippi State University. He serves as the chief research officer for the university, and provides oversight for all aspects of research compliance. He is also the President of the MSU Research and Technology Corporation, and oversees the Thad Cochran Research, Technology, and Economic Development Park.

David Shaw previously served as the Director of the Geosystems Research Institute at Mississippi State University, a research and outreach institute focused on understanding Earth’s natural and managed systems to provide comprehensive solutions for socioeconomic and environmental requirements. Its vision is to be a world leader in advancing the state-of-the-art in development and integration of spatial technologies and resource management. Initially the Geosystems Research Institutes’ focus was in agriculture, forestry, water resources, information technology, visualization of complex datasets, and computational modeling, but recently expanding to include geospatial applications in any suitable domain, such as climate, weather, and oceanography to support state and local government issues, homeland security, and economic development. He received his Ph.D. from Oklahoma State University in 1985, his M.S. from OSU in 1983, and his B.S. from Cameron University in 1981.

Dr. Shaw also served as the Director of the Northern Gulf Institute, a NOAA Cooperative Institute, which is a collaboration led by Mississippi State University, partnering with the University of Southern Mississippi, Louisiana State University, Florida State University and the Dauphin Island Sea Lab. The NGI’s primary goal is to develop a research and transition program that fills priority gaps or reduces limitations in current awareness, understanding and decision support between upland-watershed systems and coastal waters, habitats, resources and hazards. All of this is in the context of developing more resilient communities and ecosystems. NGI continues to expand its programs in areas such as unmanned aircraft systems and small satellite technologies.

Dr. Shaw began his career at Mississippi State in 1985 as an Assistant Professor. His research focused particularly on optimizing pest management practices to maintain farm productivity while improving surface water protection and management, and development of Best Management Practices for protection of surface waters from pesticides. Because of his developmental efforts in applying spatial technologies to these research areas, MSU appointed Dr. Shaw as the first Director of the Remote Sensing Technologies Center in 1998. More recently, He and his Institute currently work with numerous federal agencies, including NOAA, NASA, US DOT, USGS, DoD, and NSF.

Honors and awards include MSU’s highest distinction as a Giles Distinguished Professor in 1998, the Ralph E. Powe Research Award (MSU’s highest recognition for research) in 2000, election as a Fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2008, the Outstanding Alumnus Award from Cameron University in 1999, and the Grantsmanship Award from the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station in 1997.

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