Author Archives: codata_blog

How to Address Data Challenges in the Biomedical field: Solutions for Data Access, Sharing and Reuse

Irene Pasquetto is a PhD Student in Information Studies at UCLA.

As scientists in the biomedical fields are generating more and more diverse data, the real question today is not only how to make data “sharable” or “open”, but also, and especially, useful and reusable. At Scidatacon 2016, speakers from funding agencies, research universities, data research institutions, and the publishing industry came together to try to address this key question.

Around 20 highly interdisciplinary papers organized in four busy sessions addressed the problem from different perspectives, while agreeing on an essential point: developing new, open frameworks and guidelines is not enough. Indeed, what characterized this last edition of Scidatacon was a focus on proposing and discussing applicable solutions that can address the management, use, and reuse of large scale datasets in biomedicine today, right now.

Three main themes emerged across the sessions:

How to enable scientific reproducibility.
How to apply data science techniques to biological research.
How to make heterogeneous bio-databases globally interoperable.

#1 HOW TO ENABLE SCIENTIFIC REPRODUCIBILITY

Leslie McIntosh (Director, Center for Biomedical Informatics Washington University in St. Louis) moderated session 1, which focused on the first topic: Solving the problem of reproducibility in science, starting from making biomedical data reusable to this end.

Tim Errington (Center for Open Science) offered a clear and useful distinction between reproducibility, which he defined as the possibility of re-running the experiment the way it was originally conducted, and replicability, which is the possibility of getting the same results by reusing the same methods of data collection and analysis with novel data. Errington invited the audience to reflect on two main issues: first, incentives for individual success are focused on “getting it published, not getting it right,” and second, instead of focusing on problems with either open access or open data, we should think about “open workflows” that include the whole process of scientific research.

Similarly, Anthony Juehne (Washington University in St. Louis) talked about how to address reproducibility issues step by step across the entire “scientific workflow”. Juehne presented to possible solution to the problem: “Wrap, Link, and Cite” data products OR “Contain and Visualize” them using virtual machines.

Finally, Cynthia Hudson Vitale exposed a rarely addressed aspect in the reproducibility community, which is the fundamental role played by biocurators. While their work is often not acknowledged in the community, biocurators are those who de-facto do the hard job of cleaning and organizing the data in a way that can be used to reproduce experiments. Cynthia proposed some concrete solutions to the problem. First, domain reproducibility articles need to include a greater variety of curation treatments. And, second, curators need to publish in domain journals to ensure the full breadth of curation treatments is discussed with researchers.

#2 HOW TO APPLY DATA SCIENCE TECHNIQUES TO BIOLOGY RESEARCH

A second main theme that emerged in session 2 was how to apply recent statistical and computational cutting-edge techniques for data science (machine learning algorithms, deep learning text mining) to the biomedical knowledge discovery process. Introduced and moderated by Jiawei Han (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), computer scientists, biologists and biomedical researchers working on biological text mining presented overviews and surveys on the topic.

Beth Sydney Linas and Wendy Nilsen from IIS, the Division of Information and Intelligent Systems (NSF – National Cancer Moonshot), gave an overview of how data science can be used to uncover the underlying mechanisms that drive cancer and the development of methods that will allow clinical researchers to eliminate the disease. The researchers concluded that the future of novel computing (especially machine learning, artificial intelligence, network analysis, database mining as well as bioinformatics and image analysis) needs to be directed also as it relates to health related research.

Elaine M. Faustman (University of Washington) presented an annotated database of DNA and protein sequences derived from environmental sequences showing AR in laboratory experiments. The database aims to help fulfill the current lack of knowledge on the relations between antibiotics resistant genes present in the environment and genomic sequences derived from clinical antibiotic resistant isolates.

Jiawei Han, Heng Ji, Peipei Ping, Wei Wang presented results from their analysis of massive collection of biomedical texts from medical research literature using semi-supervised text mining. The researchers argued that interesting biological entities and relationships that are currently “lost” in unstructured data can be efficiently re-discovered by applying bio-text mining techniques to PubMed massive biological text corpus.

# 3 HOW TO MAKE HETEROGENEOUS BIO-DATABASES GLOBALLY INTEROPERABLE

Finally, over 10 presenters in session 3 and 4 shared their own first hand experiences in managing and building biomedical integrated databases and making them interoperable. The biomedical research community and funders seek to make their research resources “FAIR”: findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable, and also seek to strengthen incentives to support improved data stewardship by addressing incentives, such as data citation. Speakers shared a common concern: how to create data standards and practices from the bottom-up. As suggested by the speakers, it is necessary to be aware of existing local, cultural and social incentives, clearly define possible audiences, and involve the scientists in the database-building process. Individual projects can be consulted at the sessions’ webpage: http://www.scidatacon.org/2016/sessions/34/

The Data-At-Risk Task Group (DAR-TG) In Expansive Mood

This post comes from Elizabeth Griffin, chair of the Data at Risk Task Group

Where did we go? Boulder. What did we get? Bolder! When did we get it? Now!! (or, to be precise, this past week, Sept 8–9). What will we do? MAke Things Happen!!!

Over 50 of us were able to drop everything and get to NCAR in Boulder (CO, USA) for a 2-day Workshop on the Rescue of Data At Risk (defined as raw or meagerly-reduced data in non-electronic or primitive digital media and formats, often with separated or insufficient metadata, and all without promise of adequate preservation). We came from most quarters of the globe: Tasmania, South Africa, Ethiopia, India, Italy and England, as well as from Canada and the USA itself. Graciously hosted by NCAR at its Center Green site, and generously sponsored by the RDA, Elsevier and the Sloan Foundation, this Workshop was without doubt a scene of Work, demanding the full attention of everyone through 5 organized 1-hour break-out sessions to discuss the 5 themes of the meeting: (1) locating (and often rescuing) “at risk” data, (2) preserving them for the longer term, (3) digitizing them, (4) adding (and preserving) necessary metadata, and (5) depositing and disseminating the end products appropriately. Oral case studies and reports set the individual scenes, and numerous posters provided additional thought-provoking materials. We all “worked”, and we all scrutinized what was being offered before “shopping”, and at the end of the two days our boldness had seen true growth.

Parallel responses to questions posed to each break-out group are now furnishing input to on-line Guidelines for Rescuing Data At Risk, which DAR-TG will produce, and prompted ideas for the reference handbook (just a little further down the line) which will also be prepared.

Our determination to “MAke Things Happen” also engendered commitments (1) to run sub-TG groups with specific foci on (a) metadata, (b) catalogues of at-risk data rescued or to-be rescued and (c) the location and preservation of hardware (aka tape-readers and their ilk) and science- specific software, (2) to organize “regional” workshops as a means to engage the great many other interested parties which are also “out there”, and (3) to fund and appoint an early-career Fellow to coordinate a TG-wide investigation of a specific them (tbd, possibly “Water in the World”) where just about every facet of “at-risk” data, from the earth’s atmosphere down to its fossils, has invaluable evidence to contribute.

These plans will of course take time and effort, and some of them resources too, and even formulating them was itself quite exhausting (despite the scrumptious refreshments and meals created and served by the bountiful UCAR kitchen), but our “demonstration” proved without doubt that consolidating and proliferating our re-channelled ideas and objectives will and must be MAde To Happen. The ultimate humanitarian benefits, even just in the domain of meteorology in tropical countries, as featured in the heart-rending details given by Rick Crouthamel’s Public Lecture on “A World Heritage in Peril”, will be more than ample rewards.

We bolder on!

Eugene Eremchenko: Candidacy for CODATA Executive Committee

This is the seventeen in the series of short statements from candidates in the forthcoming CODATA Elections. Eugene Eremchenko is a new candidate for the CODATA Executive Committee as an Ordinary Member. He was nominated by WDS

The main area of interest of Eugene Eremchenko is in fundamental geospatial issues: new trends in cartography, the Situation Awareness concept, net-centricity, geospatial aspects of decision making, the theory of signs (semiotics). The new data era requires new methods in cartography and new ways of working with geodata. This belief is shared by many scientist. It is rightly called the the ‘Geospatial Revolution’. The core concept of this revolution is that of the ‘Digital Earth’.

Eugene Eremchenko gave first intentional definition of Neogeography (2008), made first Russian open 3D-model of real cities (2005-2007). He formulated the paradox associated with the ‘signless’ perception of space (‘netcentricity paradox’, 2011)’ and proposed the concept of ‘zero sign’ for solving this paradox. Also he is one of co-authors of periodical tables of maps and methods of scientific visualization, as well as the concept of ‘superholography’ (2015-2016).

Eugene Eremchenko is the Head of Neogeography R&D Group (Protvino, Russia), a scientific researcher in Lomonosov Moscow State University (Moscow, Russia), scientific directior of Technopark Protvino (Protvino, Russia). Eugene Eremchenko is the secretary of the ICA commission ‘GIS for Sustainable Development’ (since 2015). He is an elected member of the council of the International Society for Digital Earth (ISDE) (since 2016) and co-chair of the Outreach Committee of ISDE. Also he is known in Russia as a popular geospatial blogger.

Eugene Eremchenko belivies that CODATA’s philosophy is very similar to the ideas behind the ‘geospatial revolution’. The new era of science and technology requires a new concept of scientific data. Developing of this new concept and the sharing of CODATA’s vision will be the focus of the scientific activities of Eugene Eremchenko in the future.

Muliaro Wafula: Candidacy for CODATA Executive Committee

This is the sixteen in the series of short statements from candidates in the forthcoming CODATA Elections. Muliaro Wafula is a new candidate for the CODATA Executive Committee as an Ordinary Member. He was nominated by the Kenya CODATA National Committee

I am a Kenyan nationality who has served Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) for 23 years. I am currently a member and the Chair of CODATA Kenya. I am a member of the following:

Editorial board of the Data Science Journal;
Editorial board of the African Journal of Food, Agriculture, Nutrition and Development;
Committee of the AFRICA-ai-JAPAN Project Taskforce Project sponsored by JICA;
Training committee of the National Industrial Training Authority-Kenya;
Committee of the United Nations SDGs Agricultural and Climate Change Pillars of Kenya.

I coordinate all ICT related Memorandum of Understanding between JKUAT and partners. I have served in the past as the ICT Director for 5 years and director of the Institute of Computer Science and Information Technology for 4 years.

I hold B.Sc. Science (Hons) (Kenyatta University), M.Sc Physics (University of Nairobi), M.Phil. Microelectronic Engineering and Semiconductor Physics (University of Cambridge –UK), Summer Doctoral Programme (Berkman Centre for Internet & Society/Oxford Internet Institute’s -Harvard University Law School), and PhD Information Technology (JKUAT).

I am a recipient of two IBM awards namely: the 2016 IBM Shared University Research Award on Open Data Cloud Project for JKUAT that has enabled JKUAT to be a frontier on building an open data platform for researchers in Africa, and the 2014 IBM MEA Award, for capacity building in Mobile Application development that enable JKUAT train and professionally certify a large number of application developers.

I am professionally certified in various fields including Cyber Security, Mobile Application, ISO/IEC 27001:2005 Information Security Management System, Leadership and Management capacity Development, Sage Accpac ERP Financial and Operations Management Systems, and ISO 9001:2000 on Quality Management Systems.

I am a fellow of the Computer Society of Kenya and the Cambridge Commonwealth Society. I have published a book see link at https://www.amazon.com/ICT-Policy-Strategies-Government-Sustainable/dp/3639515137 and several research papers in peer reviewed international journals. I have attended and participated in several data science, big data and open data trainings, workshops and conferences.

I am an Associate Professor of the Department of Computing at JKUAT and the founder Director of the ICT Centre of Excellence and Open Data (iCEOD). As the director of iCEOD, for the past one year, I have managed to accomplish the following key activities in line with CODATA objectives:

Development and implementation of the JKUAT Open Research Data (JORD) Policy. This policy is now regarded as a frontier in Kenya and a reference for other research institutions to spur data revolution in Kenya and the region;
Design and implementation of a cloud-based value chain open data platform developed based on open data principles and standards in order to promote research data storage, preservation, sharing and reuse. The platform aims at:
1. Promoting conformity to the open data principles, policies and standards.
2. Linking and be linked to other open data platforms
3. Offering data analytic and visualization tools
4. Supporting and enable ICT Policies and strategies research for open development at postgraduate level.
5. Enabling use of research data to accelerate achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Kenya and the region
6. Establishing a call centre
7. Creating an ecosystem of strictly research data.

The establishment of iCEOD played a leading role in getting JKUAT declared by the Kenyan Ministry of Higher Education Science and Technology, as the the ICT Centre of Excellence for the Northern Corridor Integration Project (NCIP) see link http://www.nciprojects.org/ that involves Kenya, Uganda. Rwanda and Southern Sudan.

If elected as a member of committee of CODATA, I will continue to promote CODATA activities and goals. I will contribute to the strategy of increasing CODATA national membership through the Pan African University Institute of Basic Sciences, Technology and Innovation see link at http://www.jkuat.ac.ke/pauisti/ community that is hosted at my university JKUAT. Now that I am engaged in open data and data science research, and also having the experience of leading JKUAT to develop and implement both the open research data policy (JORD) and an open data platform, see link at https://opendata.jkuat.ac.ke/ , I am ready to share lessons learnt and possible best practices to be adopted through offering technical advice to CODATA community that need it. I am currently supervising seven PhD students researching on open data and data science solutions towards achievement of SDGs in developing countries.

Paul Arthur Berkman: Candidacy for CODATA Executive Committee

This is the fifteen in the series of short statements from candidates in the forthcoming CODATA Elections. Paul Arthur Berkman is a new candidate for the CODATA Executive Committee as an Ordinary Member. He was nominated by the World Data System (WDS), International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) and the Future Earth program of the International Council of Science.

Paul Arthur Berkman has been a contributor to CODATA since 2004 and served as co-chair for the first SciDataCon. He is nominated by the World Data System (WDS), International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) and the Future Earth program of the International Council of Science.

KNOWLEDGE IS THE COMMON WEALTH OF HUMANITY. These words were shared during my first CODATA meeting (Berlin, 2004) and they resonate still as a responsibility to contribute to the world we live in. Data are at the base of the pyramid toward knowledge and wisdom, underlying the decisions we make for our global sustainability. This impression was reinforced during my time at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia in 2005.

At the 2006 CODATA meeting in Beijing, it became apparent to me that data integration across the International Council for Science could be enhanced, especially with complementary bodies like CODATA and the system of World Data Centers that originated with the International Geophysical Year (now the World Data System – WDS). Nearly a decade later, I had the pleasure and honour to co-chair the scientific committee for the first International Conference for Data Sharing and Integration for Global Sustainability (SciDataCon) in New Delhi, forming an important bridge between CODATA and WDS.

As a member of the CODATA Executive Committee I will bring global insights from extensive experiences on all seven continents blended with interdisciplinary expertise ranging from oceanography to informatics and science diplomacy. These experiences include wintering in Antarctica, where I conducted SCUBA research with Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the age of 22, leading to a Visiting Professorship at the University of California Los Angeles where I taught Antarctic Marine Ecology and Policy the following year. This course eventually emerged into the Antarctic Treaty Searchable Database that was used by the Antarctica Treaty System for three years, leading to other information technology projects with federal agencies in the United States. As a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar at the University of Cambridge, I convened the first formal dialogue between NATO and Russia regarding security in the Arctic (reflected by Environmental Security in the Arctic Ocean, which has nearly 40,000 downloads), evolving further into international Arctic sustainability programs that I now coordinate through the Belmont Forum and International Institute for Applied Systems Analyses as Professor of Practice in Science Diplomacy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

Global issues of sustainability and data underlie my interest to contribute to CODATA. During my two-year term, I will focus on data-synthesis efficiencies to address global sustainability questions shared by the Future Earth program through the International Council of Science and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) program through the United Nations. Both of these decadal programs emerged in 2015 with global remits and there is opportunity to create synergies between them across the natural and social sciences, helping to balance environmental protection, economic prosperity and societal well-being in response to the urgencies of today and in view the needs of future generations. Data, especially satellite observations that provide synoptic coverage on a planetary scale, are fundamental to Future Earth and the SDG with their common goals of global sustainability.

I will serve as a focal point between the CODATA Executive Committee and the Data Task Force of Future Earth. I also will continue to create practical collaborations between CODATA and WDS, recognizing that our generation has unique capacity to leverage ‘big data’ solutions into transformative information-management and knowledge-discovery architectures. Most importantly, I will contribute passion, creativity and holistic integration skills with sense of responsibility as your representative on the CODATA Executive Committee.

CODATA-RDA School of Research Data Science

This post was written by Niharika Gujela, who has a B.Tech in IT from Delhi Technological University, India. Niharika recently attended the CODATA-RDA School of Research Data Science, hosted at ICTP, near Trieste, Italy – her participation was kindly supported by ICTP and TWAS.

This post is a syndicated copy of the one at https://thepursuitofweirdness.blogspot.in/2016/08/codata-rda-school-of-research-data.html

I recently attended the ‘CODATA-RDA School of Research Data Science’ at International Centre for Theoretical Physics,Trieste, Italy. With participants from almost 16 developing countries from varied academic backgrounds, we had an amazing workshop with all hands-on training with specific tools and softwares.

Middle East and South-east Asia

Opinions from Africa

Ideas about Open Science from East and Australia


Reasons not to share data and counter-arguments

The idea of Open Science and it’s principles was the key focus of our workshop. We discussed a lot of myths and stereotypes surrounding our individual ideas of Open Science and how different factors influence different regions for open sharing.

While accessibility to Internet connection is a major issue in Cuba, unwillingness to share one’s work before publishing it is mostly common among all regions.

With hands-on practice, we learned about topics ranging from basics like Unix, R, SQL and Git to advance like Neural Networks, High Performance Computing, Distributed Environment and Visualization.

A peak into one of the visualization ideas


Participants experimenting with visual ideas through pen and paper

We got lucky enough to grab the recent journal of ‘Open Data in a Big world’, too.

Apart from technical expertise, I met so many people and learned about new culture and places due to the global immersion. It was a lot of learning.The fact that how ‘where we are born’ can influence our lives so much, amazed me. How subtly we get entitled to so many things and we don’t appreciate them enough!

A Saudi Arabian friend told me that there are still walls within the university classrooms to segregate boys and girls.While a Cuban guy shared that there is no internet there, for general people. Just because he’s a professor, he can access the web at 36Kbps. I can’t even imagine, both the situations!

Somehow, they depict how important and hard , open access and sharing of research is, for some communities. And it’s a bigger and much needed goal!

My favorite success story from the workshop is about my roommate from India. With no technical background at all and complaints of how her programmer colleagues from office used to trick her by telling how complex work they are doing, she gained a huge confidence after the workshop and learned a lot of ‘know-hows’ about Data Science.

In and all, it was an amazing experience with lot of learning. I learned about international standards of Open access and data sharing. I got a huge community to keep the spirit of ‘Open Science’ high and spread across our own local communities.

Thank you all organizers, directors and sponsors for making it possible.

Data Science Journal Special Collection for SciDataCon 2016

Data Science Journal is pleased to announce that it will be publishing the high profile special collection of papers from SciDataCon 2016.

Authors with papers accepted for presentation at SciDataCon are also invited to submit their full papers to the Data Science Journal. Submissions should be made at http://datascience.codata.org/

Please note the following:

The deadline for submissions to be part of the SciDataCon 2016 special collection is 30 September.
Even though abstracts were peer-reviewed and accepted as part of the conference process, the full paper will be peer-reviewed to ensure quality.
Given the number of papers expected we are unable to waive the Article Processing Charge (APC) for all papers, however the Data Science Journal is very competitive and has a progressive waiver policy for those unable to pay the APC: http://datascience.codata.org/about/submissions/ Please contact the Editor-in-Chief before submitting your article if you would like to request a waiver. Editorial decisions are made independently from the ability to pay the APC.

SciDataCon 2016

http://www.scidatacon.org/2016/ and http://www.scidatacon.org/site/themes-scope/:

Advancing the Frontiers of Data in Research

SciDataCon 2016 seeks to advance the frontiers of data in all areas of research. This means addressing a range of fundamental and urgent issues around the ‘Data Revolution’ and the recent data-driven transformation of research and the responses to these issues in the conduct of research.

SciDataCon 2016 is motivated by the conviction that the most significant contemporary research challenges—and in particular those reaching across traditional disciplines—cannot be properly addressed without paying attention to issues relating to data. These issues include policy frameworks, data quality and interoperability, long-term stewardship of data, and the research skills, technologies, and infrastructures required by increasingly data-intensive research. They also include frontier challenges for data science: for example, fundamental research questions relating to data integration, analysis of complex systems and models, epistemology and ethics in relation to Big Data, and so on.

The transformative effect of the data revolution needs to be examined from the perspective of all fields of research and its relationship to broader societal developments and to data-driven innovation scrutinised. Taken together these issues form a multi-faceted challenge which cannot be tackled without expertise drawn from many disciplines and diverse roles in the research enterprise. Furthermore, the transformations around data in research are essentially international and the response must be genuinely global. SciDataCon is the international conference for research into these issues.

SciDataCon2016 will take place on 11-13 September 2016 at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel, Denver, Colorado, USA. It is part of International Data Week, 11-16 September 2016, convened by CODATA, the ICSU World Data System and the Research Data Alliance.

Reviving Past Forestry Research Works in Nepal using Zenodo

This post was written by Shiva Khanal, Research Officer with the Department of Forest Research and Survey in Nepal. Shiva was one of the international scholars sponsored by GEO, the Group on Earth Observations to attend the CODATA-RDA School of Research Data Science, hosted at ICTP, near Trieste, Italy.

Availability of research data and publications has been observed as one of the important challenges in Nepal. This is more relevant in case of research results and datasets published/produced in earlier periods. Even some of the research works published in the past were produced only in hard copies for distribution. Therefore, in many cases they are no longer available. Getting access to and/or understanding past observations are of great significance for wide range of research applications for instance past environmental change research.

One important source of information on Nepalese forestry is Banko Janakari (A journal of Forestry Information for Nepal). This journal is the oldest and has been continuously published by the Department of Forest Research and Survey (www.dfrs.gov.np) since 1987. The issues till now have covered a diverse theme of research on Nepalese forestry. There has been an initiative to make those journal available through NepJol (http://nepjol.info/index.php/BANKO). However, the availability is limited to only few issues. There exist challenges due to the fact that many of the issues are hard to find and even for those with hard copy available would require a lot of scanning and other related processing.

With the keen interest to make those papers available to the public, I had been looking for options to digitize and host them in open access repository. During my recent participation in the research data science school (http://indico.ictp.it/event/7658/), one of the session by Gail Clement (@repositorian) included information about the very interesting initiative called Zenodo (zenodo.org). Now, I have created a zenodo community of Department of Forest BankoV1N1_Page_02 Research and Survey (https://zenodo.org/collection/user-dfrs). After some doing Optical Character Recognition (OCR) on scanned text, I have splitted some individual papers of the first issue of the journal (Vol 1 No 1 Spring 1987) and uploaded in the Zenodo.

I am still exploring the functionalities of Zenodo but so far based on my experience I found easy
to use interface, assigning DOIs and easy way to get access research through persistent links. This will most likely provide an important platform to make all Banko Jankari papers open access to all in near future. Further, there are various other publications that have become rare and likely to be lost forever. It will be really important to put them on open digital repositories like this.

Der-Tsai Lee: Candidacy for CODATA Executive Committee

This is the fourteen in the series of short statements from candidates in the forthcoming CODATA Elections. As an existing member of the CODATA Executive Committee, Der-Tsai Lee is applying for re-election as an Ordinary Member. He was nominated by the Academia Sinica Taipei

I welcome this precious opportunity, representing CODATA Academia Sinica Taipei for the past two terms (2012-14, 2014-16), to stand for re-election to serving on the CODATA Executive Committee (2016-2018).

I have been involved with CODATA since 2007, serving as the Chair of National CODATA Committee, until 2012, when I was leading and hosting CODATA 23 Taipei (2012) and elected to be a Member of the CODATA Executive Committee.

In the past four years, during my two terms of serving on the CODATA Executive Committee, I have served as a liaison between the Task Group of Global Roads Data Development, I have contributed to the cultivation of young data scientists, early career data professionals, and I have focused on promoting open data, data citation practices to scientific communities within scientific organisations of CODATA Academia Sinica, Taipei, and governmental agencies of Taiwan.

With the effort of CODATA Secretariat and connected organisations, CODATA has been transformed from a historical grouping to an organisation that is active on the front line where scientists world-wide collaboratively work together to face the new challenges created by the transformations in our use of data. I have very much appreciated the past decade of participation and involvement on data sharing and exchange, and I am especially honoured and welcome the opportunity to stand for the re-election to serve as CODATA Executive Committee Member.

Past Experiences and Achievements

I am a senior computer scientist with more than 30 years of experience, teaching in Northwestern University, USA for 20 years (1978-1998), and led the prestigious Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica in Taiwan for more than a decade (1998-2008), elected as the Academician of Academia Sinica (2004-present). I have also been awarded Life Fellow of Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, USA (2015-present), Distinguished Alumni Educator Award, Dept. CS, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA (2014–present), Ambassador Scientist of Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany (2010–2015) and Member of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), Mexico City, Mexico (2008–present).

I served as the President of National Chung-Hsing University and led the agriculture-based comprehensive university for 4 years (2011-2015), facilitating regional development, international academic collaboration and higher education reform. In more than 20 year service contributing to the Taiwanese government, while leading a cross-ministry multidisciplinary digital archives and e-learning program and information security program, I have introduced effective institutional changes to facilitate the usage, sharing and dissemination of cultural data, protection of private data and openness of scientific data, and to cultivate young researchers and scholars nation-wide and globally. I currently serve as a senior advisor to the government for the scientific policies of information and communication technology and cybersecurity.

Recently, Taiwan has been on the track of instilling changes both at the governmental level and within the community of data scientists and data professionals. Taiwan has advanced from 11^th place in 2014 to the 1^st place in the 2015 Open Data Index survey released 2015.12.09 by the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN). This report of advancement represents international affirmation of Taiwan’s open data policies achievements over the past year. While there are changes in the public sector, our data science community has hosted the 3rd Annual Data Science Symposium on July 14-17, 2016 (http://datasci.tw/) with thousands of attendees. The new government and local municipal initiatives, as well as active self-motivated community scientists and data professionals, are forming new connections to kick-off changes in public and private sectors.

Having served as a member of the Executive Committee of CODATA, and given the prevalence of data science, I share the vision and scope that CODATA forerunners and current Secretariat have established. With no doubt I am most pleased to welcome this opportunity to help promote data science and data citation, with my computer science expertise, academic networking, and most of all, personal commitment.

Future Focuses

In this coming term, if elected, I will focus more on bridging CODATA with regional member organisations in Asia-Pacific Rim, exploring common data community interests and data science collaboration.

Deepen the connection between CODATA and regional scientific community through academic networks (e.g. 2017 Data Science Symposium and regional data science workshops);
Cultivate data science/data policy experts in Asia-Pacific Rim and future leaders, via alliance with global and local organisations (e.g. Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN), and Taiwan Data Science Foundation).
Collaborate with emerging and existing governmental and community organisations to explore multidisciplinary data science/open data challenges (e.g. Cultural Affairs Bureau, Taichung City Government, and Ministry of Culture, Taiwan) ;

Conclusion

In summary, I have been involved in CODATA for the last decade, and it is a great opportunity for me to contribute my knowledge, networking and influence to the global community. I hope to bring more young and new minds into CODATA family, and address multifaceted data challenges facing us all in the future.

Dr. Der-Tsai Lee’s complete personal profile can be accessed at: bit.ly/codata_der-tsai_lee

Toshihiko Koseki: Candidacy for CODATA Executive Committee

This is the thirteen in the series of short statements from candidates in the forthcoming CODATA Elections. Toshihiko Koseki is a new candidate for the CODATA Executive Committee as an Ordinary Member. He was nominated by the Japan CODATA National Committee.

I am currently a professor of materials engineering at the University of Tokyo as well as an executive director and vice president of the university. I am also a member of CODATA Japan, for which I have served as vice chair since last year. Prior to this I had been working in industry for twenty-years as a researcher of materials and welding engineering. Based on the background, I served as the chairman of a committee of welding metallurgy in IIW (International Institute of Welding) over ten years until recently, and organized and chaired annual conferences and associated meetings of the committee as well as some other international conferences in the world over 30 times as a total. Those activities have brought me not only many honorary member positions of AWS, AMS and others, but also a strong network of materials scientists and engineers in the world.

Drawing on these activities and achievements in my career, I would like to make a very serious contribution to CODATA because I believe important transformations through data will take place in this century. The current ICT era we witness buzz words like Big Data, Open Science, Industry 4.0, IoT, FinTech, AI, but we need to move towards concrete actions and face the challenges posed by these profound changes, building a strong and enduring response in the way we do data and science.

Relatedly, I am currently the leader of a nation-wide research project on materials data and informatics funded by the Japanese government, in which we are constructing database for different structural materials in collaboration with a number of universities, national laboratories and companies, and trying to connect the database with different multiscale numerical simulations to better predict the microstructure and performances of the materials and to effectively support the development of new structural materials for industries. I would like to use this project as a showcase of concrete exemplars dealing with complexities of data and deriving values from data. I think this will be valuable for the CODATA community from two viewpoints. The first viewpoint is to demonstrate the leading edge of data science in dealing with complexity of data by taking advantage of our case studies on structural materials, with the expectation that our challenges, tools and outcomes can be referred to as a good practice by other projects concerning data science in other academic disciplines. The second viewpoint is how to design business models adaptively in the current ICT environments of big divides among diversified stakeholders in the world. CODATA has played a leading role for promoting data principles and policies, but these are not always easy to put into practice in the real world. How to manage and harmonize conflicts on data among different stakeholders is not an issue only for our project, but a serious and continuous issues for all.

If elected as a member of Executive Committee of CODATA, I would like to contribute to the discussions of database policy and structure that could be a common issue in different engineering fields where data and database have both scientific importance and engineering usefulness but both scientific and engineering complexity at the same time. Data and database of structural materials are a typical instance to be discussed, and thus, I have proposed a TG about this subject. It is noted that, since the construction of such engineering database is not possible only by universities and national laboratories but needs contributions by industries in many cases, the discussion of database in engineering fields is quite different from that in fundamental science. The discussion of database in engineering should take into consideration the standpoints of industries and should encourage the involvement of industries. I currently have a number of industry members in my national project and in a big network of international experts, and thereby I believe I will be able to share my past and current experiences with industries in the discussion at CODATA. So I would like to work together with CODATA colleagues so as to create a sound ecology of scientific data for all.

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