Christine Kirkpatrick, San Diego Supercomputer Center
Christine Kirkpatrick oversees the San Diego Supercomputer Center’s (SDSC) Research Data Services division, which manages infrastructure, networking, and services for research projects of regional and national scope. Kirkpatrick is PI of the EarthCube Office (ECO), Co-PI of the West Big Data Innovation Hub, and Co-PI of the Open Storage Network. Her background is in infrastructure, especially at scale, to which she brings her personal research related to FAIR and AI. She serves on the Technical Advisory Board (TAB) for the Research Data Alliance (RDA) and the National Academies of Sciences’ U.S. National Committee for the Committee on Data (CODATA). She is an advisory board member of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) Nordic project and the Helmholtz Federated Information Technology Services (HIFIS).
What is your history with the RDA and what impact has it had on you?
I joined RDA in 2016, just before I was named Executive Director of the National Data Service (NDS). At the time, I had hoped many of the challenges around data management related to research computing had been solved and was hoping to find the answers. Instead I found a community of welcoming people who had gathered to identify the gaps and were working towards filling them. RDA is a place where sometimes the questions posed are as insightful as the suggested solutions. My participation in several of the groups has led to collaborations and development of pilots and projects in related areas. Being an RDA member has brought me tremendous benefit in that I've become part of a community of like-minded people who care about data as well as workforce development, equal access, and embedding good data practices into research.
What do you feel you bring to TAB and what is your experience so far in being a member?
As with RDA, the best part of the TAB has been getting to know the other TAB members well. People who I may not have interacted with otherwise, I now call cherished friends. I will carry this past my term on the TAB that ends this Fall. I'm told my contribution is saying the things no one else wants to say. I look forward to passing that mantle to someone else!
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