Yea, and definitely express gratitude for the dedication, that's awesome.

Maybe ask dad if he can tell OP more about how this might get used by researchers or if he has any more anecdotal stories about doing the research since it's a collection of data that's important to his field.

As someone who has a parent in a very technical research role, I've seen a lot of this kind of work and it's important to interact about it sometimes even if it's not something you can really interact with unless you have a deep expertise.