Snowflake Chairman honoured with MBE

14 June 2010, 9:17pm

Peter Woodsford, chairman at Snowflake Software, received an MBE for his services to the Geographic Information Industry in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list this weekend. The award is recognition of his contribution to the growing maturity and importance of the Geographic Information industry.

Graduating from Cambridge University in 1963 with an M.A in Mathematics and a further diploma in Computer Science, Peter’s involvement in the Geographical Information industry began with his first company, Laser-Scan, now 1Spatial, in Cambridge. He retired as Chairman there last year.

Whilst Peter devotes much of his time to his role as Chairman at Snowflake Software, he continues to push the boundaries of geographical information and data exchange and his extensive resume explains why he has been honoured in the Queen’s Birthday list, holding several high profile positions including;

· Chairman of the UK Association for Geographic Information (1991)

· Business Development Representative on Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), (1995 – 2003)

· President of Commission 5, European Spatial Data Research (EuroSDR), 2000-6.

· Visiting Professorship in Geomatics Engineering at University College London

· External examiner on M.Sc courses in GIS

· Chair of the SPLINT (Spatial Literacy IN Teaching) Advisory Committee (2008 to 2010).

As well as holding these positions, Peter continues to be an active participant in the industry. He has written over 50 papers, articles, workshop and conference contributions on computer graphics, automatic vectorisation, digital mapping, geomatics, geographic information systems, object-orientation and open standards.

On receiving the award, Peter said:

“Although the award is to me personally, I see it as a mark of the growing maturity and importance of the GI industry, and of the contributions towards this of my two companies, 1Spatial (formerly Laser-Scan) and Snowflake Software, the organisations I have worked with (AGI, EuroSDR, OGC and ISPRS) and universities I have been associated with (UCL, Edinburgh and Nottingham) to name those that come most readily to mind’

Peter will be attending the INSPIRE Conference with Snowflake from 23-25 June and will be chairing a session there. You can visit the Snowflake Software stand to congratulate Peter on receiving his MBE or to ask him any questions.

From everyone at Snowflake, Congratulations Peter, a very well deserved award.

*An MBE is an order of chivalry awarded by The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. It is awarded by the Sovereign on advice of the Government.

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