In February 2023, the RDA Council Nominations Committee issued a call for nominations for four open Council positions. In response to this call, several RDA members were deemed eligible for inclusion in the 2023 Council elections, to be voted by the RDA community. The Nominations Committee reviewed these submissions and are pleased to announce the eligible candidates to be put forward for community voting.
According to the RDA election procedures outlined in the RDA Governance Document all RDA members are eligible to vote for the set of candidates. RDA members will be asked to cast 4 preferences, one for each of the 4 open Council positions. Three of the four open positions are for a three-year term (2023-2026) with all three candidates being sought from the geographical area of “Europe and Africa” and one of the four positions is for a 2-year term (2023-2025) and the candidate must come from the regions of “The Americas”. Balancing criteria will be applied upon closure of the voting and the candidate(s) with the highest votes from the relevant geographical territory will be elected. Voting takes place through a formal election process that opens on Thursday 20 April (00:01 UTC) and ends Friday 12 May (23:59 UTC).
The newly elected candidates will join Council from Tuesday 23 May 2023. For more information on the role of the RDA Council, visit https://www.rd-alliance.org/about-rda/our-leadership/rda-council.html
RDA Council Candidates 2023 Elections
Sayeed Choudhury
Director of Open Source Programs Office, Carnegie Mellon University
G. Sayeed Choudhury is the Director of the Open Source Programs Office (OSPO) at Carnegie Mellon Libraries. Prevoiusly, he was Associate Dean for Digital Infrastructure, Applications, and Services and Hodson Director of the Digital Research and Curation Center at the Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University (JHU). Choudhury led the JHU Library team that supported the Covid-19 dashboard. He launched the JHU's open source programs office (OSPO), the first of its kind within a US university. Choudhury was also a founding member of the Institute of Data Intensive Engineering and Science (IDIES) based at JHU.
Read Sayeed's Candidacy Statement
I have no doubt he will be an insightful and energetic contributor to the RDA Council with excellent and highly relevant expertise, experience, dedication and strategic skills.
Wolfram Horstmann
Director, State and University Library Goettingen
Wolfram is Director of the Göttingen State and University Library and University Librarian of Georg August Universität Göttingen. He is a dedicated advocate of the idea to use reliable repositories as data backbones for scientific research and scholarship. He was formerly Associate Director of the Bodleian Libraries (University of Oxford, UK) and Chief Information Officer at Bielefeld University (Germany). He is biologist by training, worked in the field of Computational Neuroscience and Philosophy of Science before he actively turned his attention towards academic information management.
Read Wolfram's Candidacy Statement
I am delighted that Professor Horstmann is willing to stand for RDA Council membership. With his current and past positions in Germany he will bring in a wealth of knowledge and experience from the library and scholarly information world.
Sarah Jones
EOSC Engagement Manager, GÉANT
Sarah's background is in information management. She trained as an archivist and worked at the University of Glasgow for 15 years on various Research Data Management and digital preservation projects. Several of these years were spent working for the Digital Curation Centre which is how she became involved in the RDA. Since leaving DCC in 2020, Sarah has been working at GÉANT as EOSC Engagement Manager. Her role is to support National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) with Open Science. Again, the RDA is a valuable forum to bring NRENs who are diversifying their service portfolios and engaging in ‘above-net’ services together with other stakeholders who are already active in research data management.
Read Sarah's Candidacy Statement
Combined with her knowledge and enthusiasm for the RDA’s work and role as a global organisation, I’ll say again that she will be an excellent addition to Council.
Joyce Gosata Maphanyane (standing for 2nd term)
Researcher, University of Botswana
Joyce is an innovator, a seasoned researcher, an author, a reviewer, an academician, a mentor, an acclaimed university professor and a supervisor for students, who has had experience in both civil service and NGO endeavours that includes advocacy in database development, its protection and data sharing; climatechange and environmental issues; sustainable natural resource use and protection; organ health and organ transplant; women protection against violence and youth in development.
Read Joyce's Candidacy Statement
She brings important perspectives, both from science and civil service, of the African continent. More specifically her engagement allows RDA to continue to build on the significant engagement, contacts and good will exhibited during and after our plenary in Botswana in late 2018.
Amy Nurnberger
Program Head, Data Management Services, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Amy Nurnberger is the Program Head for Data Management Services at MIT. Amy also serves as an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Learning Analytics program at Teachers College, Columbia University. Within the broader research data community, Amy is a co-chair of the RDA Education and Training on Handling Research Data Interest Group, and is a member of the RDA Organisational Advisory Board. She also sits on the ACRL Research and Scholarly Environment Committee.
Read Amy's Candidacy Statement
Based on my experience of her work with RDA to date, I have no doubts about the levels of energy, enthusiasm, and commitment to the vision and mission of RDA that she would bring to this role.
For more information on the role of RDA’s Council, visit https://www.rd-alliance.org/about-rda/our-leadership/rda-council.html.