Regional Expert Groups

Sheila Rabun is the Program Leader for Persistent Identifier Communities at Lyrasis, where she manages the Lyrasis DataCite US Community consortium and the ORCID US Community consortium. In this role, she works with non-profit organizations across the US to support open research infrastructure by using persistent identifiers to make research and scholarly content more FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable). Sheila has worked in the academic library field since 2010, with a focus on digital workflows, agile project management, communicating technical information to diverse audiences, and advocating for interoperability in cultural heritage, research, and scholarly communication ecosystems.

Carly Robinson is the US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) Assistant Director for the Office of Information Products and Services (IPS). IPS leads the OSTI persistent identifier services, manages development of OSTI search tools providing access to DOE-funded R&D results, and responsibility over metadata quality and curation, communications, management of interagency and international products, and policy development and implementation. She has a Ph.D. and M.S. in Atmospheric Chemistry from the University of Colorado, and a B.S. in Applied Physics from Michigan Technological University.

Dedicated to public service and knowledge access, John has experience working in research and public library contexts in Canada. He graduated from McGill University with a PhD in Neuroscience in 2021, where he worked on several projects about media discourse and neurodevelopmental disabilities. He is currently the Manager of the Canadian Persistent Identifier (PID) Community at the Canadian Research Knowledge Network, supporting the use of PIDs like ORCID iDs and DOIs across the country.

Rodrigo Donoso-Vegas is a Librarian, master’s in communication and new technologies. He is the Director of the Directorate of Information Services and Libraries of the University of Chile. He is specialized in the management of university libraries, working in public and private institutions leading automation processes, and the development of new products and services.

Ricardo is a curious, self-taught, and passionate individual. He takes pride in being an OpenCon alumnus (2017), an Open Knowledge Maps ambassador, actively engaged with the Open Science Framework Community Community, and has recently joined the DataCite Americas Expert Group. Overall, he is a passionate advocate for open science.

Mariah joined the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center at Carnegie Mellon University in 2022 as a Data Curator and Metadata Librarian. She is part of the Biomedical Applications Group and is the primary curator for the Brain Image Library and also works on the National Institutes of Health HuBMAP project, and the Consortium Organization and Data Coordination Center for the National Institutes of Health SenNet project. Mariah holds a M.Sc. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Her goal is to facilitate sharing of research data with the global scientific community in order to promote scientific innovation.

Maria Lucia Lizarazo is the Administrative Coordinator of the Center of Resources for Learning and Research (CRAI) at Universidad del Rosario, Colombia, where she led the implementation of the institutional strategy of research data management, and is part of the group that coordinates the open science strategy. She has experience working in the areas of technology transfer, research data management, open science, intellectual property and science, technology and innovation projects. Maria Lucia has a M.S. and a B.S. in Industrial Engineering with an emphasis on technology transfer and is currently member of the DataCite Americas Expert group.

Nydia López is the General Director of eScire, graduated from Benemérita Universidad Autnónoma de Puebla as Chemical Engineering. She is member of the committee of American Experts in DataCite, and a specialist in the implementation of interoperable digital repositories. Also, she is an advisor to various institutions, especially in the area of positioning, content visibility, and digital identity. Nydia has coordinated the dissemination and realization of various academic events at the international level with organizations such as the CAyRI Network, CONRICYT in Mexico, the Public Knowledge Project, and the Mexican DSpace Users Group.

He holds a Ph.D. and Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Brasília, with a sandwich Ph.D. internship at King’s College London. He also has a bachelor’s and teaching degree in Mathematics from the University of Brasília. He is the Technical Coordinator of the Treatment, Analysis, and Dissemination of Scientific Information Area at the Brazilian Institute of Information in Science and Technology (Ibict / MCTI). He is a member and coordinates projects and committees in the areas of Open Science and Data Science. He is the leader of the Research Group and Laboratory of the Brazilian Scientific Research Ecosystem (LaEPeCBr). Research interests include Formal Methods, Open Digital Repositories, Scientific Data Repositories, Interoperability between Open Information Systems, Open Science, and Data Science.

Sarah is a Research Data and Life Sciences Librarian at Cornell University’s Albert R. Mann Library, and a long-standing and active member of Cornell’s Research Data Management Service Group. She is also a member of the Data Curation Network, a community-led organization that works to develop educational resources and facilitates conversations around data curation topics in addition to providing a multi-institutional shared-curation workflow for curating data. Sarah’s interests include data curation, sharing, and preservation, and open science and research reproducibility in the molecular and life sciences disciplines. Sarah has a B.S. in Biochemistry, Cellular and Molecular Biology, and M.S. degrees in Botany and in Information Science.

Librarian, Specialist in Integral Management, Master in Business Administration, 23 years of experience in project management, digital libraries, institutional repositories and open science. He currently works as a Specialist in Information Systems Administration at the Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia. Member of the group Activos por la Ciencia Abierta and Member of the Group of Experts of Data Cite of the Americas.

Kelly leads adoption efforts and engages with the DataCite community on technical implementation. Before joining DataCite, Kelly worked at the Portage Network of the Digital Research Alliance of Canada, where they contributed to national data discovery initiatives and supported the DataCite Canada Consortium. Kelly holds an MLIS from the University of British Columbia, a BS in Computer Science, and a BMus in Music Composition.

Natasha Simons is Director, National Coordination, for the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC). She leads a large, talented team of Program Managers and Subject Matter Experts contributing to deliver ARDC’s strategic Research Data Commons initiatives. Based at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Natasha is passionate about bringing out the best in people and creating high performing teams. She has a high international profile in the area of research data infrastructure and enjoys collaborating to solve common data challenges, particularly through the global Research Data Alliance. Natasha holds a number of positions on international Boards and is co-chair of the DataCite Community Engagement Steering Group and the APAC Expert Group.

Chih-Chih Estelle Cheng is the Engagement Manager for Global Direct at ORCID. She supports and engages with ORCID Direct Members, Publishers and Services and Vendors. Based in Taiwan, Estelle works collaboratively with communities to promote adoption of ORCID, to establish communities of practice, and to drive more platforms or products supporting ORCID. Before joining ORCID, Estelle served as the product manager for digital object identifier (DOI) at Airiti.

Scott Edmunds is the Editor in Chief of GigaScience Press. With over 15 years experience in Open Access and Open Data publishing he is co-founder of CivicSight (formerly Open Data Hong Kong) and CitizenScience.Asia, and is on the Board of Directors of the Dryad Digital Repository. Based in Hong Kong, he has a PhD in cancer molecular biology and additional experience teaching data curation and management at Hong Kong University.

After working in the IT industry for many years, I joined Japan Link Center to spread academy outputs of Japan Globally.

Nobuko Miyairi is a freelance consultant, based in Tokyo, Japan. She provides strategic consulting for new business development and start-up in STM publishing and scholarly communications. Her service caters to a wide range of needs from academic societies, research institutions, publishers and solution vendors both within Japan and internationally. Previously Nobuko worked for ORCID as Regional Director, Asia Pacific. She also worked for Nature Publishing Group (now Springer Nature) and Thomson Reuters (now Clarivate) primarily engaged in their custom solutions business. A librarian by training, Nobuko earned an MLIS from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

Jiban is a well-rounded information professional, a habilitated digital archivist, and a founding member of the Re3data Editorial Board. He earned his PhD from the University of Calcutta (India) and then was a Visiting Fellow of the ICTP-Trieste (Italy) sponsored by UNESCO. He is impassioned to build the capacities of R&D organizations for digital scholarship through open-science infrastructure. He has been serving the Indian Statistical Institute for more than twenty years and also acts as a Nodal Officer of the Indian Research Information Network System. Jiban always brings a thoughtful approach and he likes to listen to everyone for a rational and inclusive decision. He received the prestigious InfoShare Award of the ASIS&T (USA) in 2021.

Yuyun leads the Institutional Repositories Team in Nanyang Technological University Library. She has spearheaded the research data repository assessment in NTU Library which led to certification. She enjoys interacting with repositories’ end-users and is passionate about user education.

Xiaoli leads the Implementing FAIR Workflows project, working on building exemplar FAIR practices throughout the research lifecycle with the project team and partners. She is also responsible for the outreach effort in the APAC region while co-chairing the DataCite APAC Expert Group. She holds an MLIS from Syracuse University and is working towards her Ph.D. in the same field from the University of Sheffield. Before joining DataCite Xiaoli worked at CERN in parallel with her Ph.D. research on Open Science research practices among high-energy physicists.

Hana joined the National Library of Technology in Prague in 2022 and is currently the head of its National Centre for Persistent Identifiers. The Centre supports the use of PIDs on the national level and leads the national ORCID and DataCite consortia. Hana has a background in information and library science and has experience with information services in a public institution as well as a multinational private company.

Arif Shaon is the Head of Digital Curation, Preservation and, Access unit within the Digital Collections Department of Qatar National Library (QNL). In this role, he leads the development and sustainability of the Library’s digital curation and preservation services. In a career spanning over a decade, Arif has held several positions in the UK and Australia, ranging from undertaking research to providing technical leadership in research data management, digital preservation and advanced environmental informatics. Arif’s past notable endeavours include the development of a sustainable infrastructure for research data service and digital preservation for the University of New South Wales Australia (UNSW) Library. He has also led several European and UK projects in Linked Data (to support the UK Open Data initiative), advanced environmental informatics and digital preservation. Arif also has a PhD in metadata curation for long-term digital preservation.

Raed K. Al-Zoubi is the Library Director at Jordan University of Science & Technology (JUST). Raed has more than 28 years of management/technical experience in ICT/IS/Libraries, during the last 13 years Raed was dedicated to library services. Raed is an active board member at CoE (Jordanian Libraries Consortium); he is the head of e-subscriptions and technical committees at CoE. In the last 3 years Raed is working closely with ASREN and support them in their projects and initiatives in the areas of Open Science, Open Access & Libraries.

Dario has spent the last 10 years in the University Library department at UNIMI, overseeing technological environments and implementing the ex-libris ALMA suite. His responsibilities included providing support for back-office users, extracting data for statistical analysis, utilizing the API to correct database information, and engaging in various technical activities related to service delivery and operation. In 2022, he also acquired specific competence in the area of Open Science and Open Research Data, conducting webinars, constructing websites (for example see https://rdm.unimi.it/), and assisting researchers in their activities.

Harold Bowa serves as the Business Development Officer at the UbuntuNet Alliance where he is part of the communications team for the AfricaConnect 3 project. This initiative focuses on digitally transforming research and education in Africa through the establishment of a regional internet connectivity network and the enhancement of practitioner capabilities. Over the past 2 years, Harold has been part of a team leading the UbuntuNet Alliance DataCite consortium. Committed to advancing the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, he actively contributes to aligning African NRENs with these goals. Harold is also a public speaker and likes to read.

Jez helps researchers and librarians make the most of technology, with a focus on research data and software. He is currently Data Services Lead at the British Library, where he is responsible for enabling researchers to get DOIs for their outputs through the UK DataCite Consortium, and for the Library’s overall approach to data and datasets in the national collections. He is passionate about learning & teaching, good software engineering practice and making technology accessible to a more diverse range of people. He holds an MSci in Mathematics and Computing and a PGCert in Higher Education, is a certified Carpentries Instructor and a Fellow of the Software Sustainability Institute. Jez has his own blog.

Dr. Chacha Fares holds a degree in Library and Information Science and has been a university professor at Mohamed Lamine Debaghine Setif 2 University since 2009. His main interests are information retrieval and its organization in digital environments, digital libraries, automatic processing of languages, digitization of manuscripts and big data. Chacha has participated in several international conferences and national forums. In addition, he has published in peer-reviewed scientific journals and is currently working on the publication of a book on the organization of information in a digital environment.

Gultekin Gurdal has been working as the library director at IZTECH. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Library Science and a Master’s in Business Administration. Between 2008 and 2012, he served as the Chairman of the Anatolian University Libraries Consortium (ANKOS), one of the biggest consortiums. He is a member of the “TUBITAK’s Open Science Committee,” “CoHE’s Open Access and Open Science Working Group.” He participated in OpenAIRE projects and is one of the OpenAIRE AMKE Executive Board members. He is working on EU projects PATTERN and DIRNA and is co-founder of Research Ecosystems, an R&D Company established within IZTECH Technopark in 2021.

Tilo Mathes currently supports Research Space, a provider of Research Data Management solutions, as Product Manager and Open Source Lead. Tilo has more than 8 years of experience in building and growing digital products and services for a wide range of academics and science communities. With a background in academic research, he brings in a unique end-user perspective into his work and is excited to work on services and initiatives that foster open science.

Olayemi works at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture headquarters in Nigeria as the Open Data Engagement Officer. She leads a team of data curators, and a repository officer managing the institutional tabular data. She has a Bachelors degree in Statistics and two Master degrees in Statistics and Project Implementation and Development, respectively. Olayemi has been working with research data for over 20 years, analyzing, curating, and contributing to research publications. She is a passionate advocate for open data and engages in organizing workshops for data management. She is a member of the International Biometric Society and the Group Coordinator for the Nigeria chapter. She enjoys reading, driving, and watching animal documentaries.

As Project Community Manager since 2023, Ursula facilitates global consultations and engagement with diverse OA book stakeholder communities on 2 projects: the OA Book Usage Data Trust effort and PALOMERA. Her position is hosted by OPERAS-EU, the European infrastructure consortia focused on Open Scholarly Communication in the European Research Area for Social Sciences and Humanities. Prior to this position, Ursula worked in publishing and bookselling, focusing on print book sales, foreign rights, OA journal commissioning, and institutional partnerships.

Martina Stockhause is a meteorologist and environmental scientist, working at the German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ). She jointly manages the IPCC Data Distribution Centre (DDC) together with her international partners since 2014. As member of the WGCM Infrastructure Panel and the CMIP Panel, she is involved in the infrastructure development for climate science. Her main interests include long-term data preservation, data publishing, data interlinking and related standardization efforts. She contributes her expertise to several RDA groups and the RDA Technical Advisory Board and to the EOSC Long-Term Data Preservation Task Force.

Since 2020, Paul is DataCite’s outreach manager. In addition to his communications work, he is involved in the PID Network Germany project. Before joining DataCite, Paul worked for the Helmholtz Open Science Office and several universities where he was involved in building publication and data repositories. Paul holds an M.A. in North American Studies, Italian, and ethnology. A dedicated advocate of Open Science, Paul strives to spread the idea of openness in scientific communication. Paul loves beautiful infographics and even more his crazy family.