Michael L. Nelson

Michael L. Nelson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Old Dominion University (ODU) in Norfolk, Virginia. He is also a Chief Scientist, Department Director, and Eminent Scholar with a focus on web science, digital preservation, and repository-object interaction. He joined ODU in 2002 after working at NASA Langley Research Center from 1991–2002.

• Ph.D. in Computer Science, ODU (2000)
• M.S. in Computer Science, ODU (1997)
• B.S. in Computer Science, Virginia Tech (1991)

Nelson is a pioneer in digital preservation, emphasizing the importance of archiving social media content and developing tools like Warrick and CRATE to recover extinct websites and ensure metadata preservation. His work includes collaborations with the Library of Congress and Los Alamos National Laboratory.

His research has been supported by grants such as the NSF CAREER award (2007) and a $830,000 Mellon Grant (2016–2019) for preserving the scholarly record with colleague Michele Weigle.

Key contributions:
• Editor of OAI-PMH, OAI-ORE, Memento, and ResourceSync specifications
• Developer of the NASA Technical Report Server
• Founder of the Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group