The Technical Advisory Board (TAB) provides technical expertise and advice to the Council, and assists in development, review and promotion of RDA Working & Interest Groups.
RDA holds annual elections for TAB membership. The following individuals are candidates for the upcoming 2020 TAB election where 5 seats on TAB are open for election. Voting in this election will open on 9 November 2020, at Virtual Plenary 16 and close on 23 November 2020 (two weeks later). All RDA members are eligible and encouraged to vote.
The candidate statements and details below have been clustered based on the geographical region and are otherwise listed in alphabetical order of their surnames.
Note that the TAB elections are subject to balancing criteria in order to ensure diversity across the criteria. For full information on the TAB election process and the balancing criteria, please visit see the TAB Responsibilities and Processes document (PDF).
Region: Americas
Dr Karin Breitman
Organization Name
Rio Tinto
Professional Title
CTO / IT Director
Over my dual career I held a tenured Computer Science Professor position at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, where I lead joint industry projects with NASA, HP, IBM and Microsoft. Ten years ago I joined industry to serve as corporate vice president and chief scientist at EMC and Dell Technologies. Today I am the head of Analytics for the Rio Tinto group and serve in the board of directors of Engie Brazil Energia, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro Business School (COPPEAD), and Grupo Editorial Nacional (alternate). I held positions at the ACM Practitioner's Board, the Brazilian Computer Society Board of Directors, and served as expert to the European Commission and to the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation. I am the author of over one hundred combined patents (Microsoft, EMC, and Dell), books, and scientific papers.
As a member of the TAB I believe I can contribute in (1) strengthening existing, and establishing new public-private partnerships and (2) sharing best practices from experiences in coordinating multiparty, geographically, and culturally diverse research projects and leading global industrial teams.
| Country: Brazil | Region: Americas | Discipline: Engineering and Technology |
Ms Gretchen Greene
Organization Name
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Professional Title
Data Science Group Leader
Hello, I am submitting this information toward my candidate nomination for the RDA TAB. Currently I am serving as a new Co-CHAIR with the RDA Research Data Management in Engineering IG. For the past five years, I have worked at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) , the government national metrology laboratory, where I provide leadership and technical engagement for the organizational research data systems. I am currently a Data Science Group Leader (manager) in the Material Measurement Laboratory, Office of Data and Informatics as well as a co-lead and project manager for the NIST Open Access to Research, a cross laboratory project initiative which promotes and builds research data infrastructure spanning across all research disciplines at NIST. The OAR project is one that I have presented at RDA Plenary in Botswana, and also published in the CODATA sponsored Data Science Journal. While the primary efforts at NIST focus on physical sciences, I also contribute to projects which involve social science efforts, such as the NIST Disaster Resilience where NIST is currently leading the investigation for the Hurricane Maria disaster in Puerto Rico in additional to other major disasters (Earthquake, Fire, Hurricane, and as legacy, the World Trade Center). My role in this project has been to facilitate use cases which develop and support data interoperability with NIST and the external community. I also collaborate and work with the NIST Greenhouse Gas for urban cities and Forensic Sciences research teams in a similar capacity. My group at NIST is responsible for research data and informatics, ranging from development and consulting of Laboratory Information Management Systems to outreach and training, such as the Carpentries program, and includes individual research in Biosystems, most notably recent involvement in a COVID mitigation modeling study . My extensive background prior to working at NIST was Chief Engineer of Data Management System for the Space Telescope Science Institute (both a mission and science operations center) in Baltimore, Maryland USA. In this position I was the lead of all data management systems across several space missions (Hubble, James Webb, TESS, and more) including operational and public data archive systems. I also served for the International Virtual Observatory Alliance as Chair of the Registry Data Working Group, and was a member of the Technical Coordination Group for several years. Through my experience at IVOA, I developed a strong interest in promoting standards, framework architectures, and strategies for developing interoperable data systems, collaborations with diversity, and communications. Some additional RDA related areas: I am an advocate of FAIR data principles, FAIR-DO, currently leading a CORE Trust Seal application for the NIST Public Data Repository, have co-lead the RDA RIDA (Research Infrastructure for Data Analytics) BOFs at P13-14, and continue to participate in several IG/WG sessions to increase my understanding and engagement with like minded organizations and individuals. Thank you for considering this nomination.
| Country: United States | Region: Americas | Discipline: Natural Sciences |
Ms Juliane Schneider
Organization Name
Sage Bionetworks
Professional Title
Senior Bioinformatics Analyst/Data Liaison
I am a metadata specialist who has worked in cataloging, discovery, ontology development, product and repository design, and research data management. Throughout my career, I have worked with research computing departments and software engineers to build tools and systems to organize and improve discovery of curriculum materials and library resources.
At NYU Medical Center, I worked with the research computing group to develop an early proof-of-concept electronic curriculum system, using the UMLS to describe and organize video lectures, surgery animations, images of laboratory slides, and discussion forums. I also kept up with developing technologies, working with the IT library group to facilitate the change to handheld devices as information portals for bedside care.
I've also worked with groups across medical campuses, including the Drosophila RNAi Screening Center (DRSC) and the course directors at Harvard Medical School, to create new tools or improve existing ones, using ontologies and other discovery-based methods to get the most out of existing data.
At UC San Diego, I worked with oceanographers, archaeologists and computer scientists to describe and transfer data into the institutional repository, and gave guidance on data standards. I also became a certified Carpentries instructor, and have taught many workshops across North America.
At Harvard Catalyst, their Clinical and Translational Science Center, I managed the eagle-i repository and used the platform to create a new tool for discovery of bioinformatics training and education.
Currently, I am the Systems Biology data liaison for Sage Bioinformatics, managing the transfer of research data from consortia to the Sage Bionetworks repository.
I have been co-chair of the Libraries for Research Data IG, and have been an active member of the Metadata IG, but have attended many Birds of a Feather meetings and participated in fantastic discussions in groups like the Repository Platforms and GO FAIR IGs. I come from a library background, but I have disciplinary knowledge in medicine, bioinformatics, tool development and ontologies. I will be able to bring a multi-faceted perspective along with a sense of the history of RDA (I've been in RDA since 2015) and some ideas on how we can better foster cooperation across the many Interest and Working groups that make up this vital and exciting organization. I also see RDA as a key player in the development of consensus on decisions critical to all disciplines as science, technology and the world continue to change and move forward.
| Country: United States | Region: Americas | Discipline: Medical and Health Sciences |
Region: Asia and Oceania
Dr Mingfang Wu
Organization Name
Australian Research Data Commons
Professional Title
Senior Research Data Specialist
I am a senior research data specialist at the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC), where I work on and facilitate the community of practices on a number of topics related to FAIR data and software, such as data discovery, data provenance, data quality, metadata standard, data service harmonisation, software citation, and data application. I also serve as an ARDC liaison officer to track progress and health of some ARDC funded projects.
Before joining ARDC (then Australian National Data Services), I was a research scientist in CSIRO and then in RMIT university, working in the area of information retrieval. My research topics include natural language processing, interactive information retrieval, interfaces supporting exploratory web search and enterprise search.
I have been a member of RDA since 2014. 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). In 2016-2019, I worked with other co-chairs and members of the DDP IG, delivered three supporting outputs, as well as led the RMS WG spin-off from a task force. I also contributed to two supporting outputs from the Data Versioning Working Group. Through my involvement in chairing working/interest groups and in participating in RDA plenary meetings, I fully appreciate RDA as a community organisation that brings members from different technical, skill and cultural backgrounds, works on common challenges facing open research. 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.
I will be able to contribute to the Technical Advisory Board with my domain knowledge on data and information technical infrastructures, my experiences in facilitating communities of practices and the co-chairing of RDA groups. I will actively engage with RDA groups to work more effectively and make connection among groups, therefore to improve collaboration among various RDA groups. I will contribute to promote RDA and encourage the participation of RDA from the Asian Oceania region.
| Country: Australia | Region: Asia and Oceania | Discipline: Engineering and Technology |
Region: Europe and Africa
Dr Rossella Aversa
Organization Name
KIT - SCC
Professional Title
Researcher
I got a Ph.D. in Astrophysics at the International School of Advanced Studies (SISSA-ISAS) in Trieste (Italy) in 2015. In the same town, I finalized my studies with a Master in High Performance Computing (MHPC) in 2016, and I worked as a postdoc at the National Council of Research - Istituto di Officina dei Materiali (CNR-IOM) for three years, acquiring experience in machine learning techniques applied to nanoscience and in research data management. I am currently working in the Data Exploitation Methods group at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology - Steinbuch Centre for Computing (KIT - SCC) in Karlsruhe (Germany).
For the last five years, I have been actively involved in various national and international research projects and initiatives, e.g. NFFA-Europe, EUSMI, EUDAT, RDA, SFB "Episteme in Bewegung".
With my scientific background and my heterogeneous experience on data management applied to different research fields (nano science, soft matter, humanities), I aim to contribute to RDA TAB by actively foster the FAIR data concept. This implies not only the research data (and metadata) itself, but also the technologies and the management plan behind. I would like to act as a bridge between different research communities, identifying common requirements and creating connections among the RDA groups. This will help to disseminate the RDA results, as well as to establish new recommendations.
| Country: Germany | Region: Europe and Africa | Discipline: Engineering and Technology |
Prof. Jesus Carretero
Organization Name
University Carlos III of Madrid
Professional Title
Professor
I am a Professor at Carlos III University of Madrid teaching and researching in parallel and distributed systems, Data Intensive applications, strategic planning and large-scale computer architecture. My PhD in Computer Technology and Architecture from Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (1995) was focused in high-performance parallel file systems. My research activity is centered on high-performance computing systems, large-scale distributed systems, data-intensive computing, IoT and real-time systems. I have coordinated several EU projects related to data management, security and HPC. Last one is the project ADMIRE from EuroHPC. In the last years, my research have been applied to data-intensive applications related to health and IoT. I am a Senior member of the IEEE Computer Society and member of the ACM and I also collaborate as a Technology Advisor and in projects with several companies. I have also been chair or program chair of several major conferences, such as ISPA, CCGRID, Euro-MPI, Cluster, etc.
If I am elected as TAB member, I plan to contribute to the TAB activities though the liaison with RDA groups in strategical thinking activities to promote the elaboration of a synergistic roadmap among various groups and to develop a holistic view of the WGs and IGs involved. I will also devote effort to promote RDA activities, especially in my area of activity and my geographic region, where I will work as a communication . Finally, I will act as a link between RDA and the local WGs.
| Country: Spain | Region: Europe and Africa | Discipline: Engineering and Technology |
Ms Sarah Jones
Organization Name
GÉANT
Professional Title
Engagement Manager
My current position is EOSC Engagement Manager at GÉANT, the pan-European data network for the research and education community. In this role I am devising a data strategy for the GÉANT community and supporting NRENs to engage in Open Science initiatives. I hope to encourage greater NREN participation in RDA as I see strong opportunities to collaborate across network providers, data infrastructures and research communities globally.
An information professional by training, I have an Arts and Humanities background and started my career in the Performing Arts subject centre of the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS). I have spent the last 15 years in the university sector, primarily working for the Digital Curation Centre where I was Associate Director until June 2020. I have also served on various European Commission Expert Groups (Turning FAIR into Reality and the Transport Research Cloud) and am currently an independent expert on the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) Executive Board.
I have been involved in RDA since 2014, working as a member contributing to various groups, as a co-chair of several IG/WG (Active DMPs, CODATA/RDA data science schools, Global Open Research Commons), and as a mentor for the early career researchers group. I was also involved in the RDA Europe project, where I coordinated adoption grants, helped bring on new nodes and co-developed RDA's regional membership approach to support long-term sustainability. These experiences give me a sound understanding of how RDA functions and should enable me to contribute productively to TAB and support WG/IG and members.
How I would like to see RDA develop
What I most value about RDA is the richness of the forum. Very few organisations provide such diversity of membership and offer a true cultural melting pot where challenges can be productively debated and addressed to develop robust solutions that serve the global data management and sharing community. Serving on TAB would also provide opportunities for me to engage in new topics and learn from an international set of peers from different career backgrounds to my own.
A key reason for my interest in serving on TAB at present is to ensure we safeguard the richness of the RDA forum. The world is undergoing unprecedented change, which affects our ability to physically come together and collaborate globally. I serve on the programme committee for the 17th plenary in Edinburgh and am keen to ensure we utilise technology effectively to facilitate the kinds of discussion we have seen at past plenaries, whether participants are in-person or remote. Online or hybrid plenaries also open up opportunities for us to broaden the reach of RDA and enable fuller participation for groups who may previously have found the time commitment, travel or financial barrier too high. The strong international networks formed in the NREN community could be a useful vehicle to help RDA connect further in the global South.
Inclusivity and diversity are areas I like to champion and I hope to see RDA develop sponsorship schemes to facilitate participation from groups that are under-represented in our membership, be they from certain countries, disciplinary groups, career-stages, genders or ethnic backgrounds. I am also keen to support the development of communities of practice in RDA to address disciplinary approaches to data management and sharing. In the Turning FAIR into Reality report, myself and colleagues recommended that more should be done to support research communities to develop their standards and practices for data sharing. I would like to encourage more disciplinary groups to echo examples from fields such as astronomy, and believe that providing a space which brings researchers together with software engineers, curators, service providers and other disciplines will ultimately help us to build the social and technical bridges that enable open sharing and reuse of data.
| Country: Netherlands | Region: Europe and Africa | Discipline: Humanities |
Dr João Rocha da Silva
Organization Name
Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto / INESC TEC
Professional Title
Invited Assistant Professor, Post-Doc Researcher
I received my Masters in Informatics Engineering from the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto in 2009, and joined Deloitte the same year. In 2012, I returned to academia and got my Ph.D. in Informatics Engineering in 2016, also from FEUP. My thesis focused on applying Semantic Web technology (ontologies and triple stores) to Research Data Management (RDM), namely in domain-specific descriptions of heterogeneous datasets.
Besides deploying the research data repositories of INESC TEC (https://rdm.inesctec.pt) and U.Porto (https://ckan-rdm.up.pt), I led the development of the Dendro platform (https://github.com/feup-infolab/dendro), a collaborative RDM repository designed for researchers to use themselves. Dendro is both a file storage and a repository, with a graph data model underneath. It combines both generic and domain-specific ontologies to help researchers describe and interlink datasets. Then, it not only provides self-deposit and faceted search but also streamlines the deposit of finished datasets in external repositories powered by ePrints, DSpace, Zenodo, CKAN, among others.
In my own country of Portugal, I am a part of the team in charge of writing the National Strategy for Open Data, under a mandate from the main national research funding institution, the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia. I am also a constant presence at the National Forum for Open Data since its first edition back in 2016 and have presented work at practically every edition.
At RDA, I have been co-chair of the Repository Platforms for Research Data Interest Group since June 2017, and have been actively involved in RDA-pt, the Portuguese node of RDA. At the RDA P12 in Gaborone, I had the privilege of being awarded an Early Researcher Grant and participated in several sessions, from which I highlight my own IG’s BoF sessions which we are trying to spin off into new WGs:
The Repository Interfaces for Data Analytics BoF, fostering interoperability across heterogeneous repositories
The Policy Support and Enforcement Within Repositories BoF, which aims at recommending a core set of functionality that repository software should implement in order to support common use cases present in a DMP.
A more detailed account of my participation in the plenary can be found in the RDA blog here: https://www.rd-alliance.org/blogs/idw2018-botswana-these-are-exciting-ti...
I am currently an Invited Assistant Professor at FEUP, teaching courses on Service-Oriented Architectures, Databases and Software Development.
Expected contributions
Given my technical experience in the design and development of software solutions for RDM, I believe I can be of service to the TAB by:
- Providing opinions and advice on certain technologies and trends whenever necessary
- Designing initiatives to bring more researchers in contact with RDM technology, practices and repositories
- Identify possible opportunities for inter-IG collaboration in the plenaries and outside of them
- Providing an interface between the IGs and the rest of the TAB to help improve communication and possible proposals for launching new technology-focused WGs.
| Country: Portugal | Region: Europe and Africa | Discipline: Engineering and Technology |