Mingfang Wu

Dr. Mingfang Wu is a senior research data specialist at the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC). She has over twenty years of research experience in the areas of natural language processing, interactive and contextual information retrieval, and interfaces supporting web search and enterprise search. Her recent research focuses on eliciting data discovery context for improving data discovery services. Mingfang has also coordinated a variety of ARDC (then ANDS) projects (e.g. data commons, data application, data platform) and communities of practice (e.g. software curation and citation, data provenance, data quality).

What is your history with the RDA and what impact has it had on you?

I became a member of RDA in 2014. Since then I have been actively co-chairing two groups: The Data Discovery Paradigms Interest Group (DDP IG) and the Research Metadata Schemas Working Group (RMS WG), also contributing to a few other WGs/IGs as an active member. My involvement in RDA has extended my perspectives of those areas through collaborative work with international experts, enriched my experiences of coordinating an international team to deliver group output, while bringing what I have learnt from RDA back to the projects and community of practices that I co-ordinate or participate in Australia. I fully appreciate RDA as a community organisation that brings together the members from different technical, skilled and cultural backgrounds to cooperatively work on common challenges. We support each other and pursue to have common understanding and consistent practices around the global in order to have effective and efficient data infrastructures to support open research.

What do you feel you bring to the TAB and what is your experience so far in being a member?

Being a TAB member has further enhanced my understanding of RDA as a collaborative organisation - how it operates and how each component supports and coordinates with each other. Although I have become a TAB member very recently and only be able to see my fellow TAB members on screen, I have already felt their enthusiasm, critical thinking and drive for the best. I hope I am bringing to the TAB my knowledge and research experience in data and information infrastructures, experience in facilitating communities of practices and the co-chairing of RDA groups; as well as gathered feedback from Australian data and research communities about their challenges and barriers in integrating data management into research culture.