For Immediate Release
Date:   February 14, 2005

IIa President Receives DOI Conservation Service Award

Oak Ridge, TN. Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton awarded the Department of Interior’s Conservation Service Award for 2004 to Bonnie Carroll, President of Information International Associates, at the Department’s awards ceremony (February 2, 2005) in Washington, D.C., for “outstanding contributions” to developing the National Biological Information Infrastructure and other biological informatics efforts. Norton cited Carroll’s “strategic vision” both with NBII and with the Office of Science and Technology Policy’s Biodiversity Informatics Working Group. She also commended Carroll’s “tireless efforts” as co-chair of the NBII Coalition to raise NBII visibility to trade and professional associations, NGOs, and others.

The award underscores Carroll’s “innovative leadership.” Norton pointed specifically to Carroll’s success as both the Executive Director of CENDI, the Federal STI Managers Group, and with NBII to leverage the conservation missions of CENDI federal agencies to create new NBII partners--the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture, and several bureaus of the Department of Commerce.

Carroll is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She represents the National Academies as the U.S. National Delegate to CODATA, a committee of International Council for Science that serves 22 nations. She has consulted such international organizations as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization); and the International Council for Scientific Information (ICSTI).

Carroll’s information management firm, headquartered in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, is the information technology protégé for Oak Ridge National Laboratory and provides IT infrastructure to the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI).