This is the seventh in the series of short statements from candidates in the coming CODATA Elections at the General Assembly to be held on 27-28 October 2023.  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 on the development of ontologies for materials science and engineering. From 2014 to 2023, in the Japanese national project SIP (Strategic Innovation Promotion Program), I have been participating in the subject “Materials Integration” and have led research on data integration for materials design and materials database development.

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 and 25th term of the Science Council of Japan (2017-2023) and have been working to disseminate CODATA activities, including the release of the Japanese translation of “The Beijing Declaration on Research Data” in 2019. I and my colleagues are now organizing a new CODATA subcommittee for the 26th term of the Science Council of Japan from 2023 to 2025. In the Science Council of Japan, I am also a member of the International Science Data Subcommittee and the WDS Subcommittee.

In addition, as a vice president of the Japan Society of Information and Knowledge, I also collaborate with researchers who work with data archives and social science data. In recognition of these activities, I am involved in organizing several international and national academic conferences and symposiums related to open science, data sharing and international networking.

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.