Babs Buttenfield received the national research award by the UCGIS (University Consortium for Geographic Information Science), for significant contributions to geospatial data generalization and modeling, multi-scale mapping and geodatabase design, most notably through her continuing Research Faculty affiliation with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Center for Excellence in Geospatial Information Science (CEGIS). This award has been given annually by UCGIS since 2002.