Portuguese researcher wins the 2026 GBIF Ebbe Nielsen Challenge Award

Joaquim Santos, a researcher at the University of Coimbra, was one of the four winners of the 2026 Ebbe Nielsen Challenge for his tool , georeference.it, developed to improve the geographic information associated with biodiversity records made available through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).

The award was announced at the 33rd meeting of the GBIF Governing Council in Oslo, following the evaluation of 66 nominations from 31 countries.

The award-winning tool is an open-source platform that allows the community to collaborate on identifying the geographic locations of biodiversity records. Through consensus-based validation, it seeks to fill gaps in the available information and detect possible errors in the coordinates of the records, thereby helping to improve data quality.

This is now the third time a Portuguese national has won the Ebbe Nielsen Challenge. Miguel Bastos Araújo was the first Portuguese winner in 2013, and Miguel Porto was a finalist in the challenge in 2015.

The Ebbe Nielsen Challenge annually recognizes innovative applications of open-access biodiversity data, encouraging the development of tools that support research and public policy. This award honors Ebbe Schmidt Nielsen, one of the principal founders of GBIF and a leading figure in biosystematics and biodiversity informatics.

Portugal, with the support of the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), is a member of GBIF, an international platform whose mission is to coordinate the standardization, digitization, and global dissemination of data on global biodiversity for the benefit of science and society.