Executive Director:
Dr. Simon Hodson
Simon Hodson (he / him) has been Executive Director of CODATA since August 2013.
Simon is an expert on data policy issues and research data management. Most recently, he was coordinator of the groundbreaking WorldFAIR project, which is now being extended as an international collaborative initiative, WorldFAIR+, to advance the development and implementation of the Cross-Domain Interoperability Framework (CDIF).
Simon has contributed to a number of landmark reports and policy documents: he chaired the European Commission’s Expert Group on FAIR Data which produced the Turning FAIR into Reality report. He was also vice-chair of the UNESCO Open Science Advisory Committee, with an influential role in drafting the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, which was adopted in November 2021. Previously he contributed to influential reports on Current Best Practice for Research Data Management Policies, to the Science International Accord on Open Data in a Big Data World, and to the OECD Global Science Forum and CODATA Report on Sustainable Business Models for Research Data Repositories. Simon also contributes activity to the work of the CODATA Data Policy Committee and to the UNESCO-CODATA Working Group on Data Policy in Times of Crisis.
Additionally, Simon has contributed to many projects, Working Groups and Steering Groups. In recent years, Simon has been a co-chair (2015-2018) of the GEO Data Sharing Working Group, to which CODATA has made a long-term contribution; a member of the Board of Directors of the Dryad Data Repository (2012-2018), a not-for-profit initiative to make the data underlying scientific publications discoverable, freely reusable, and citable; Project Director, African Open Science Platform Project (2016-19); and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of CESSDA ERIC, the European data infrastructure for the social sciences.
Simon has a strong research background, as well as considerable project and programme management experience: from 2009 to 2013, as Programme Manager, he led two successful phases of Jisc’s innovative Managing Research Data programme in the UK.
Email: simon[at]codata.org
CODATA Secretariat:
Standards and Metadata Expert: Arofan Gregory
Project Portfolio Manager: Matti Heikkurinen
In addition to cutting grass professionally a few decades ago, Matti (he / him) has worked as a software engineer at Nokia Telecommunications and contributed to implementing a web-based document management system supporting LHC experiments at CERN. His technology-focused career derailed when he got pulled into communications and project management roles at the CERN IT department. Popularisation of the Grid computing paradigm as a member of the “GridCafe” website team and responsibility for the support of the pan-European policy think tank (e-Infrastructure Reflection Group, e-IRG) laid the foundations of a new, dual-pronged career path.
In 2005, Matti used these foundations to launch a consulting career focusing on cross-organisational policy and management around European research IT services supporting innovation. Later on, the focus shifted to the intersection between environmental modelling and the technical and operational aspects of high-end HPC systems. The innovation support theme continued in his roles at EGI Foundation and the IT department at ETH Zurich and, finally, in the different projects of the RDA Europe.
With the possible exception of cutting grass, the common motivation in these activities has been supporting innovation and positive change – be it by improving communications, building social capital or adopting new tools and approaches. The project portfolio manager role at CODATA fits this pattern perfectly: Matti maintains an overview of projects and project plans and helps maximise their contributions to CODATA’s mission: to connect data and people to advance science and improve our world. As a final note, Matti is much more comfortable behind the camera than in front of it (as can be seen in the picture), which may explain his interest in event photography.
Contact details:
Email: matti[at]codata.org
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattiheikkurinen/
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-5939-1811
Programme Assistant: Asha Khandelwal
Asha (she / her) is a law graduate with previous experience working with CASRAI. Now she takes care of CODATA website updates, mailing list management, social media communications and other key administrative tasks.
Contact details:
Email: asha[at]codata.org
Senior Research Lead: Dr. Laura Molloy
Laura (she / her) is the senior research lead at CODATA, with a focus on the RDA TIGER project, and was previously project manager for WorldFAIR and a contributor to the FAIRsFAIR project. She is Arts & Humanities Section Editor for the Data Science Journal (https://datascience.codata.org/) and joined the Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts in 2016. She convenes the CODATA Research Data Management Terminology Working Group, co-chairs the RDA Collections as Data Interest Group, and previously co-chaired the Research Data Alliance Interest Group on Education and Training for the Handling of Research Data, and the RDA Archives and Records Professionals IG. Laura sits on the board of the Informall information literacy initiative, and regularly performs peer review for journals, conferences and award panels.
Since 2007, Laura has delivered a number of projects and initiatives in the digital preservation, digital curation and research data management (RDM) spaces. These include the management of a pilot UK research data discovery service for the Digital Curation Centre (DCC); advocacy and training to support RCUK expectations for RDM across the UK; skills-development and advocacy work for the FP7-funded Planets project; mapping of the JISC Managing Research Data (MRD) programme training outputs to the Vitae Researcher Development Framework and the SCONUL Seven Pillars models for JISC DaMSSI; production of the EC-funded DigCurV digital curation curriculum framework for cultural heritage; and work as Evidence Gatherer across the Jisc Managing Research Data programme of 2011-13.
Laura’s PhD in Information, Communication and the Social Sciences at the Oxford Internet Institute/Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford, focused on digital curation and digital literacy skills in UK visual art professional practice and won the ASIS&T Doctoral Dissertation award in 2021. She also holds an MA in Scottish Literature and Language, and an MPhil in Information Studies from the University of Glasgow. Laura is interested in interdisciplinary research, qualitative research methods; terminologies; creative arts professional practice; skills frameworks; improvement of the academic infrastructure for researchers including motivation and reward; research data policy development particularly for the arts and humanities; the development and certification of graduate education, training and careers in research data-related professions; transparent and ethical academic publishing, and the development of approaches to digital curation and RDM advocacy and training across all disciplines and user audiences, including the particular challenges of the articulation of digital curation and research data management good practice to non-science audiences.
Email: laura[at]codata.org
Operations Manager: Hana Pergl
Hana Pergl Sustkova (she / her) joined the CODATA Secretariat as Operations Manager in December 2019 and supports the strategic activities of the CODATA Executive Committee. Her background is business administration and management.
In addition to her role at CODATA, Hana has also managed operations of the GO FAIR International Support and Coordination Office (GFISCO) since October 2018. Prior to that, she served as a project manager to the ELIXIR research infrastructure, which marked her transition from an international corporation to the academic sphere.
Contact Details:
Email: hana[at]codata.org
Page last updated: 2024-11-04.