This is the fourth in the series of short statements from candidates in the coming CODATA Elections at the General Assembly to be held on 15-16 November, 2021.  Toshihiro Ashino is a candidate for the CODATA Executive Committee as an Ordinary Member. He was nominated by Japan.

My area of expertise is materials data, and I have conducted research in particular on the development of ontologies for materials science and engineering. In the Japanese national project SIP, I am participating in the subject “Materials Integration” and leading the research on the integration of heterogeneous materials data resources, such as experimental data, equations and simulations using ontologies.

In CODATA, I proposed the CODATA Task Group, “Exchangeable Materials Data Representation to support Scientific Research and Education”, which was accepted by the General Assembly in 2006, and co-chaired the group for two terms (2006-2008, 2008-2010).　I was also nominated by the Science Council of Japan at the CODATA General Assembly in 2018 to be a member of the EC and has supported CODATA’s activities by serving as a liaison to the TGFC, a traditional activity of CODATA, from 2018 to 2021.

In Japan, I chaired the CODATA sub-committee in the 24th term of the Science Council of Japan (2017-2020) and have been working to disseminate CODATA activities, including the release of the Japanese translation of “The Beijing Declaration on Research Data” in 2019. In recognition of these activities, I have been invited to join the JOSS (Japan Open Science Summit) organization committee and RDUF (Research Data Utilization Forum) program committee, which have been established in order to promote open science, open data and research data management in Japan. In the 25th of Science Council of Japan (2020-2022), I have been appointed the chair of CODATA sub-committee, a member of WDS sub-committee and a member of the International Science Data committee.

I am also working for standardization of materials data representation, participating a series of CEN workshops from 2009, He is also a member of the Japanese national liaison committee for CIPM (International Committee for Weights and Measures) and contributes to Digital-SI, which is currently one of the most important activities for CODATA. Materials data has been one of CODATA’s key areas since its foundation, and we will continue to promote this. As the use of research data becomes increasingly important internationally, and as advanced infrastructures for this use are being built and changing the way of research itself, CODATA’s activities will provide a common international platform for this. I will contribute to international cooperation for this purpose.