Dr. Kate Beard is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Spatial Information Science Engineering at the University of Maine. She has been a research faculty with the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) since its beginning in 1989. She holds a M.S. (1984) and Ph.D. (1988) from the Institute for Environmental Studies, Land Resources Program, University of Wisconsin-Madison where she specialized in geographic information systems.  Her current research focuses on digital libraries, metadata and spatial data quality, uncertainty of spatial data and visualization of spatial data quality. Dr Beard has been a cooperator on the Alexandria Digital Library project centered at the University of California Santa Barbara, she was PI on a project to develop a digital spatial library for the Gulf of Maine, and is currently a PI on a project to develop a digital library for Maine Lakes. Her work on data quality covers metadata representation, management and tracking of errors in spatial databases, and various methods for visualizing and communicating data quality.  Dr. Beard is one of four PIs on a three year grant from the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) to investigate uncertainty in spatial databases. She is a PI on another NIMA grant that is investigating the integration of geospatial data and imagery. Dr. Beard is also a PI on a two-year grant from NSF to investigate the application of spatial concepts to genome mapping. Other research interests include investigations of spatial resolution and scale issues in the distribution of environmental variables. Dr. Beard has authored or co-authored over 50 articles in journals, books and conference proceedings in the area of geographic information science.

Dr Beard is serving a two year term as board member for the Cartography and Geographic Information Science Society. She serves on the Editorial Board of URISA journal and is a member of the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping, the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association, the Geospatial Information Technology Association, and the Association for American Geographers. She teaches Introduction to GIS, GIS Applications, Spatial Analysis, Community Information Systems and seminars on Uncertainty in Spatial Databases, Automated Generalization and Visualization of Data Quality.