Gwenaëlle Moncoiffé

Gwen is a biological oceanographer who specialised in scientific data management in 1998. She leads the team responsible for managing the NERC Vocabulary Server at the British Oceanographic Data Centre, National Oceanography Centre (NOC-BODC), working in close collaboration with the technical lead Dr Alexandra Kokkinaki. She has a PhD in phytoplankton ecology from the Queen’s University of Belfast followed by 5 years of post-doctoral research in marine biogeochemistry. She is an experienced sea-going scientist both as a research scientist and as a data manager. Interest in cross-domain interoperability and in encouraging the adoption of well managed controlled vocabularies by the scientific community. Has worked alongside fieldwork scientists to improve data management workflows in large multidisciplinary research programmes, co-authoring guidelines and best practice documents for e.g. SCOR-IGBP sponsored programmes (IMBER, SOLAS) and the European project EPOCA (Ocean Acidification). She was chair of the IOC-UNESCO IODE Group of Experts in Biological and Chemical Data Management and Exchange Practices (GEBICH) from 2007 to 2011. In this role, and in subsequent national and international collaborations including those developed as part of the European SeaDataNet/SeaDataCloud and EMODnet chemistry projects, she has contributed to the development of vocabularies, data standards, and recommendations to facilitate the exchange of physical, chemical and biological data from a variety of environments.