THE HODSON TRUST was established by THOMAS S. HODSON, a Maryland lawyer and state senator. His son, CLARENCE HODSON (pictured), a lawyer and banker who was commissioned a colonel by the governor of Maryland, provided the trust’s assets. Colonel Hodson founded the Beneficial Loan Society in 1914 to make small loans available to working-class Americans. The company became Beneficial Corporation and in 1998, before it merged into Household International, Beneficial was the largest consumer credit company in the U.S. Since 1920, The Hodson Trust has donated millions of dollars to four Maryland colleges, including Johns Hopkins. In addition to its support for this directorship, the trust made a commitment in 1999 to Hopkins for a multi-use building on the Homewood campus, named Hodson Hall, and makes substantial annual gifts, in recent years supporting the Hodson Scholars program, the Hodson Success Awards, the Provost’s Undergraduate Research Awards, research in oncology, and the cancer buildings initiative.
Held by G. Sayeed Choudhury
G. SAYEED CHOUDHURY, Engr 1988, 1990 (MSE), is the Associate Dean for Research Data Management and Hodson Director of the Digital Research and Curation Center at the Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University. He is a member of the Executive Committee for the Institute of Data Intensive Engineering and Science (IDIES) based at Johns Hopkins. He is a member of the Board of the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and a member of the Advisory Board for OpenAIRE2020. He has been a member of the National Academies Board on Research Data and Information, the ICPSR Council, the DuraSpace Board, Digital Library Federation advisory committee, Library of Congress’ National Digital Stewardship Alliance Coordinating Committee, Federation of Earth Scientists Information Partnership (ESIP) Executive Committee and the Project MUSE Advisory Board. He has been a Senior Presidential Fellow with the Council on Library and Information Resources, a Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins and a Research Fellow at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the recipient of the 2012 OCLC/LITA Kilgour Award. He has testified for the Research Subcommittee of the Congressional Committee on Science, Space and Technology.
Choudhury has served as principal investigator for projects funded through the National Science Foundation, Institute of Museum and Library Services, Library of Congress’ NDIIPP, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Microsoft Research, and a Maryland based venture capital group. He is the Product Owner for the Data Conservancy which focuses on the development of data curation infrastructure. He has oversight for data curation research and development and data archive implementation at the Sheridan Libraries at Johns Hopkins University. Choudhury has published articles in journals such as the International Journal of Digital Curation, D-Lib, the Journal of Digital Information, First Monday, and Library Trends. He has served on committees for the Digital Curation Conference, Open Repositories, Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, and Web-Wise. He has presented at various conferences including Educause, CNI, JISC-CNI, DLF, ALA, ACRL, and international venues including IFLA, the Kanazawa Information Technology Roundtable, eResearch Australasia, the North America-China Conference, eResearch New Zealand and the Arabian-Gulf Chapter of the Special Libraries Conference.