Created by Aretha Alencar, last modified on Dec 07, 2010

This table contains the full names of people, both in unsplit and split forms. People can be parsed out of following originating fields:

  • Principal Investigator
  • Co-PI Name(s)
  • Program Manager

This table contains the following fields:

  • PK: Automatically generated. Guarantees uniqueness.
  • LAST_NAME: Also known as "family name."
  • FIRST_NAME: Also known as "personal name."
  • ''MIDDLE_INITIAL'
  • ORIGINAL_INPUT_NAME: The exact (unsplit/unparsed) string as found in the originating field.
  • FORMATTED_FULL_NAME: It is not always the exact (unsplit/unparsed) string as found in the originating field. The value in this field will always contain the information in the same syntax, which is - <Last Name>, <First Name> <Middle Initial>.

The patterns that can be properly parsed into respective respective fields are as follows:

  • <LastName>, <FirstName>
  • <LastName>, <FirstInitial>. <FirstName>
  • <LastName>, <FirstName> <(AlternativeName)>
  • <FirstName> <LastName>
  • <FirstName> <MiddleInitial>. <LastName>
  • <FirstName> <MiddleInitial> <LastName>

These patterns were derived by analyzing name generating fields from a large corpus of NSF files. We are working on making the Person name parser more complete in future versions of NSF Loader.

People are never merged during loading. Automatic People merging can be done via the Merge Identical NSF People algorithm.

Also see INVESTIGATORS and PROGRAM_MANAGERS for additional information.