This is the tenth in the series of short statements from candidates in the forthcoming CODATA Elections. Bonnie Carroll has served on the CODATA Executive Committee since 2012 and is seeking re-election. She is nominated by the US CODATA National Committee.

My first international CODATA meeting was the 1985 meeting in Jerusalem. Since then I have been involved with both International CODATA and the U.S. National Committee for CODATA. I’ve held positions within CODATA, including the program committee, symposium coordinator, speaker, U.S. National Representative and Co-Chair of the Data Citation Standards and Practices Task Group. In addition, it has been my honour to serve on the Executive Committee to International CODATA for the past two years.

Through all these years I have watched the importance of data as an asset grow in recognition and significance. Today in the fields of science we live in a data intensive world. For the last 40 years, CODATA has been an international resource and focal point for policy, standards, and practices in good data management. Now there are many organizations that have entered the field and deal with aspects of the data management lifecycle. I have been involved with several of these other organizations. In the US, I have been executive director for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Interagency WG on Digital Data; am the long-standing executive director of the federal interagency CENDI group, which addresses federal information S&T policy issues and programs; have been the executive secretary for the US delegation to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility; a member of the Board on Research Data and Information at the National Academy of Sciences; and many other US and international research data and information organisations and activities as the CEO of a private sector information management and consulting organisation, International Information Associates (IIa).

It is critical for CODATA to be both a leader of and a partner with these other organisations as we work to improve the stewardship of our data resources. We have only to look at the important example of our growing partnership with the ICSU World Data System and the establishment of the SciDataCon conference. As a member of the Executive Committee, I have been an active participant in both our strategic and operational deliberations. We need to continue to work on the Task Group structure and selection process to ensure that we are covering the important topics in data management. I believe that we should encourage more active involvement of the ICSU Scientific Unions. And we need to work hard to learn the lessons of the first SciDataCon, so that we make it the preeminent international data conference. If I am elected to serve another term, I will be committed to furthering CODATA as an effective and vital leader towards the future of data management.

This is the ninth in the series of short statements from candidates in the forthcoming CODATA Elections. Kassim Mwitonid is a new candidate seeking election to the CODATA Executive Committee.  He is nominated by the OCTOPUS Task Group, of which he is a co-chair.

My quest to become an ordinary member of the CODATA Executive Committee is motivated by a series of events and personal experiences – particularly in the last couple of decades. For instance, it is now widely acknowledged that global challenges such as climate change, food security and terrorism can only be addressed in globally co-ordinated initiatives. Across the globe, data scientists have woken up to the realities of the need to develop novel analytical frameworks for coping with dynamics of modern day highly voluminous multi-faceted data. However, cohesive strategies for capturing, tracking and modelling such data are still in their infancy. Thus, one of my main motivations in applying for a place on the Committee is to get involved in CODATA’s long-term interdisciplinary initiatives to address global issues through data-driven research in a spatio-temporal context. As the current chair of the OCTOPUS – Task Group embarked upon mining space and terrestrial data for improved human livelihood, I am quite acquainted with ICSU-CODATA-WDS activities. For over fifteen years I have established strong interdisciplinary teaching, research and consulting relationships with colleagues across all continents. By joining the CODATA Executive Committee, I will bring not only a wealth of interdisciplinary skills in dealing with various phenomena affecting human livelihood through data modelling, but also extensive multi-cultural skills necessary for widening CODATA’s scope into new regions.

I have always perceived the Middle East and Africa as the missing link in the core activities of CODATA and WDS and so it is my vision to familiarise young scientists and researchers in those regions with CODATA and WDS core activities via OCTOPUS. It is my hope that such a vision will provide both capacity building and help fulfil CODATA’s initiatives – bridging the global scientific data digital divide and forging new frontiers in Data Science and Technology. I have already established strong working relationships with institutions and funding bodies such as the Qatar National Research Fund through its flagship programme – NPRP and the Wellcome Trust through its recently launched programme – DELTAS Africa. To cater for regional-specific needs, OCTOPUS has now split its research focus into two main streams – modelling of space-terrestrial phenomena and modelling socio-economic and cultural dynamics. One reason for this strategic move has been the fact that consequences of globalisation and urban life constitute a complex system the conceptualisation of which requires equally intricate data solution models. Human activities – physical or non-physical, urban or rural generate large volumes of data that can, using data acquisition and modelling techniques, be harnessed and converted into knowledge. In parts of the word, capturing, interpreting and monitoring dynamic interactions among urban data attributes relating to, say, diseases, socio-economic status, education, gender, crime, life style, diets, migration, urbanisation, globalisation, stress, pollution and many others have greater priority.

I obtained a PhD in Statistical Data Mining from the School of Mathematics of the University of Leeds in 2003 and I also hold an MSc-Informatics from Sofia (1991) and an MSc in Finance from the Strathclyde (1997). I am a member of several professional bodies and I am on editorial boards of several international journals and data repositories. My research interests are in developing enhanced methods for the extraction of knowledge from multi-faceted data related to various phenomena that affect human livelihood which fits in nicely with my vision above. I have published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and presented at national and international conferences across the globe. I was one of the first researchers to express interest in ICSU-ROA’s Health and Wellbeing Programme a few years ago with a concept paper on developing centralised adaptive data mining applications to uncover patterns, interactions and dynamics of health issues across the African continent. Between 2008 and 2011 I was part of an international consortium that characterised, documented and archived distributional properties of clay soil chemicals across the African continent.

This is the eighth in the series of short statements from candidates in the forthcoming CODATA Elections. Tim Dye is a new candidate seeking election to the the Executive Committee.  He is nominated by IUAES, the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences.

The “human” aspect of data is frequently absent or minimalized in technological and scientific communities, though we all directly experience the primacy of critical relationships at the local, national, and international levels that enable the sharing of ideas, methods, and resources. I represent the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES) on CODATA, and, as such, bring a two-fold emphasis on 1) the human relationship with data and 2) the value of curating, analyzing, and using unstructured (qualitative) data.

While we who work in informatics and data science often focus predominantly on technical and mechanical aspects of capturing, analyzing, and disseminating data, my own interests relate to the human relationships that surround this work – such as the political, social, and cultural aspects of data, data diplomacy, and frameworks for community ownership of data (for example, among indigenous populations). As a medical anthropologist, I am committed to exploring areas where the ethical generation and use of data (particularly but not only scientific data) can help improve the human condition around the world, respecting equity and justice.

Without deliberate inclusion of issues surrounding the human aspects of data within data-related policymaking, technological innovation, and global scientific organizations, we exacerbate inequity and waste of resources. The very existence of CODATA represents acknowledgement that international and inter-organizational cooperation is valued and central to global conversations around science and technology, and I believe that the continued infusion of social science and community perspectives within CODATA’s framework augments its ability to create cooperation and global value. These central values of CODATA align well with my own, and with the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences.

In the statement below, in support of his candidacy as CODATA President, Geoffrey Boulton presents his vision of Science in a Data-Intensive Age and the challenges and agenda this sets for CODATA.  This text is also available as a pdf.

The last two decades have seen unprecedented growth in the capacity to acquire, store, manipulate and instantaneously transmit data. It is a world historical event that is changing the lives of individuals, societies and economies. It has major implications for science, research and learning that are far more profound and pervasive than those of the earlier, analogous revolution in data storage and human communication, that of Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in the 1430s.

These developments offer profound challenges to science, and because of this to CODATA in adapting its historic role as the principal coordinator of data initiatives at the international level to focus on new, data-intensive ways of doing science.

Much of the challenge comes from so-called “big data”, which are “big” because of the volume that systems must ingest, process and disseminate; because of their diversity and complexity; and because of the rate at which data streams in or out of the systems that handle them. Terabyte-sized data sets are now common in Earth and space sciences, physics and genomics etc. The exploitation of these opportunities depends on the development and use of many technical solutions.

The data explosion and our capacity to combine, integrate and analyse large, varied and complex datasets offers powerful new ways of unravelling complexity, improving forecasts of system behaviour and detecting patterns in phenomena that have hitherto been beyond our capacity to resolve. It is the Google way of doing science. Such data-intensive science will at least complement the classical approach of hypothesis-theory-test. Some even argue that it will replace it. In any case it requires that we understand the mathematical and statistical basis of data manipulation. It is essential to develop new tools and new techniques to exploit this understanding, and to adopt new habits of working that have an ethos of open access to data in order to facilitate re-use, re-combination and re-purposing. Openness also facilitates more effective dissemination of scientific concepts and the evidence for them, in society and in education. It has the potential to change the social dynamics of science, and contribute towards the evolution of science as a public enterprise, rather than one conducted behind closed laboratory doors.

The Challenges that CODATA Must Address

These issues naturally pose major questions about the way science is done and also define the major issues to which CODATA should apply itself:

• How do we understand the deep mathematical basis of “data science” and how can we articulate this with clarity for scientists, technologists, businesses, policymakers and the public? What does it mean to be a scientist and researcher in a digital age?
• How can we maintain the open data principle in a data-rich world to ensure that the data underlying scientific concepts are open to scrutiny and replication or invalidation?  (The danger is that data manipulation takes place within a black box that is not open to scrutiny, in which case, science ceases to be science).
• How can we incentivize and enable the data sharing, re-use and cooperation required to efficiently use multiple data sources and to address global challenges effectively?
• How should we exploit the capacities of machines to use learning-based algorithms to match patterns and to interpret complex information in ways that are accessible to human cognition and thereby aid and not by-pass human creativity?
• How is cyber-security to be maximized and how is personal privacy to be respected in the use of data for research?
• How should the interface between publicly-funded science and rapidly advancing commercial data science be stimulated and exploited?
• How are universities, institutes and other places where science is done best encouraged to be develop proactive and creative management of their data and their support for data-intensive science?
• How should principles and processes of data science be embedded in scientific education and training?
• What opportunities does the digital age offer for more inclusive, democratic ways of producing scientific knowledge and in playing a transformative role in society?

A bold vision for CODATA

These major tasks require boldness, vision and organization. They are so central to the issues of data use and integrity that the credibility and relevance of CODATA would be seriously in question were it not to address them. The priorities for CODATA should be the analysis, articulation and communication of answers to these high-level questions, and engagement with the national and international bodies that have the capacity to implement them. CODATA should continue to collaborate with bodies such as the Research Data Alliance (RDA) – which works to build solutions to promote data interoperability – and with the World Data System (WDS) – which ensures that data are managed and made available for the long term – with the objective of identifying and advocating those international norms and standards for which there is a need.

CODATA should be a forum to advance understanding of data-intensive science and to advocate solutions to questions that this developing science raises. It should be a means of stimulating a response to them within national science systems. It is well placed to do these things through the structures of the International Council for Science (ICSU), to which it reports, with its two orthogonal axes of membership:

• The scientific unions in ICSU represent international science communities and articulate the principles and priorities of their disciplines. CODATA should work with them to promote understanding and change and to advocate good practice from those that have adapted to the data-intensive challenge.
• The national representatives in ICSU are well placed to influence national scientific structures, priorities and education in data-intensive science. The work of scientists and their institutions is embedded in national systems of organization and funding to which the development of national data-intensive science needs to adapt. Collaboration with national members of ICSU will be a key in ensuring that national needs are respected whilst meshing with the international nature of science.

It will be the role of the President, working with the Executive Director and key committees to ensure that the above priorities are deeply embedded in the activities of CODATA.

This is the seventh in the series of short statements from candidates in the forthcoming CODATA Elections. Mark Thorley has served on the CODATA Executive Committee since 2010 and is seeking re-election. He is nominated by the UK CODATA National Committee.

I welcome the opportunity to stand for re-election to the CODATA Executive Committee and to continue to be involved in helping manage and direct the important work of CODATA.

I have been a member of the CODATA Executive Committee since 2010. During this time I believe that CODATA has benefited from my skills and expertise, especially for the work I have done on the future of the CODATA Data Science Journal and also as the CODATA representative on the ICSU group which produced the ICSU policy statement on Open Access. As Chair of the CODATA Data Policy Committee I have been actively involved in helping develop the ‘agenda for data’ – a core element within the work on Policy and Institutional Frameworks for Data.

If re-elected I would focus on progressing the work of the Data Policy Committee, and also work to ensure that the CODATA Data Science Journal is further developed into a high-quality open access journal with a robust business model. The journal is an important external face of CODATA, and a key route to help disseminate information on the important work being undertaken by the CODATA community.  I am also keen to see how through supporting capacity building activities CODATA can advance the science and practice of research data management by enabling access to the wide range of expertise within the CODATA community, especially for those in less developed countries. To me it is crucial that we get over the message to the research community that research data management is not just a responsibility of the data management community. Rather it is the responsibility of all those involved in research, because it is central to the process of research, especially in our digital age.

I have an established track-record in research data management, both at the operational and the policy and strategic level. In 1990 I joined the British Antarctic Survey as a marine data manager, then becoming head of the Antarctic Environmental Data Centre, before moving onto become the Data Management Coordinator for the UK’s Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC). I am currently the Head of Scientific Information at NERC, where amongst other things, I have responsibility for data policy, science information strategy and NERC’s network of research libraries. Some of the strategic areas I work in include data exploitation, big data, e-infrastructure and data publishing.

I also have a high-profile role as one of the Research Councils UK (RCUK) policy leads in Open Access and scholarly communications, where I have been heavily involved in the development and implementation of the RCUK Policy on Open Access.

As a member of the UK’s Open Access Implementation Group and the Open Research Data Forum I am now one of the key UK players in Open Access and Open Data. I am also a member of the advisory board for the recently established Nature Publishing Group journal ‘Scientific Data’.

The breadth of my experience means that I belong to a small group of individuals who are able to understand the whole landscape of research data, from the technical side of data management to the developing area of data publishing and data citation, and the interplay between data management and scholarly communication more generally.

Alongside the Research Data Alliance and the ICSU World Data System, CODATA has a continuing and important role to play supporting the science and practice of research data management, especially within the ICSU family, and if given the opportunity, I am keen to continue to contribute to the work of CODATA.

This is the sixth in the series of short statements from candidates in the forthcoming CODATA Elections. Toshihiro Ashino is a new candidate seeking election to the CODATA Executive Committee, although he has been strongly involved in a number of CODATA activities.  He is nominated by the Japanese CODATA National Committee.

Academic and Research Experience

First, I am now a professor at Toyo University and Chair of the General Regional Studies Program, a member of the Centre of Computational Mechanics Research at Toyo University and a member of theScience Council of Japan subcommittee on CODATA.

I have been involved in research and development of materials databases and materials data sharing since 1985. I led the materials data sharing platform project from 2006 to 2007 in collaboration with NIMS (National Institute for Materials Science, Japan) and AIST (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan), who are maintaining world famous, high-quality and comprehensive materials databases, and continuously collaborating with them for dissemination and enhancement of materials databases.

In Japan, a new national research program which introduces information technology into structural materials design have been started. I’m participating in a materials integration subgroup which tackles integration of materials databases, empirical rules and computational methods. To this subgroup, I will contribute system design and materials data representation for data exchange among software modules.

My participation in CODATA

I organized a session on materials data at the CODATA Conference in Beijing, 2006. On the basis of this, Professor Laura Bartolo and I proposed the CODATA Task Group for Exchangeable Materials Data Representation to Support Scientific Research and Education, which was approved by the CODATA General Assembly after the Conference. I co-chaired this task group from 2006 to 2012, and during this period, organized international workshops at New Delhi and Kiev, as well as several sessions at CODATA conferences. I am now participating in this task group and joint Interest Group with RDA (Research Data Alliance) as a member from Japan.

I have also assisted the CODATA Data Science Journal to start its service on J-Stage as a Publication Board member and now also an Editorial Board member.

For a bright future for CODATA

Recently, materials informatics – as a new approach to improve new materials development – is emerging and materials data sharing is increasing in importance. I am playing a leadership role in this field in Japan. CODATA can play major role with RDA and with other national and international organizations and I will try to reinforce these important relationships and collaborations for CODATA.

Also, CODATA has helped promote the availability of fundamental data for the science/engineering community for a long time. Since huge measured data can be easily obtained and many heterogeneous data items are linked each other on the Web, it is becoming difficult to identify evaluated and reliable data among them. All measured data should be confirmed in the context of highly evaluated and feasible values, this reference data is small but requires considerable investment and maintenance by skilled experts. These tasks require long term experience and international recognition in order to provide these fundamentals as Linked Open Data. CODATA has both these attributes and can play an important role. I would like to try to establish the fundamentals by which CODATA can ensure the reliability of all measured data made available as LOD.

This is the fifth in the series of short statements from candidates in the forthcoming CODATA Elections. LI Jianhui is a new candidate seeking election to the CODATA Executive Committee, although he has been strongly involved CODATA as the Secretary-General of CODATA China.  He is nominated by CODATA China.

As Professor and Assistant Director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Computer Network Information Center (CNIC), and Secretary-General of the Chinese National Committee for CODATA (CODATA-CHINA)，I have been making efforts to promote CODATA International and CODATA-CHINA’s activities. My research is focused on scientific data infrastructure, scientific data citation and publication, data intensive computing and data science. I have been leading scientific data sharing in CAS for almost 10 years, and I am now pushing forward research data sharing and data publication in China. Since 1999, I have worked on technology research and platform development for scientific data management, sharing and analysis, and led the scientific data infrastructure development and sharing of CAS. I led my team to design and build up the CAS Scientific Data Cloud (http://www.csdb.cn) for data sharing, big data analysis and large scale data-Intensive scientific research, and published more than 50 papers as well as applying for eight patents and one national standard.

I am now leading a group to design and develop a research data repository and data journal for scientific data publication in China. I am also the Co-PI of the National Data Sharing Network for Basic Research, which coordinated scientific research data sharing among universities, institutions and other research organizations. In addition, I am an active member of three CODATA Task Groups to which I have made signficant contributions.

As the Secretary-General of CODATA-CHINA, I organized a series of activities to help promote and improve scientific and technical data management and use, and increasing the impact of CODATA in China through attracting Chinese scientists to participate in CODATA activities, including the International CODATA Conference, Task Groups, Training Workshops, etc. In the beginning of this year, supported by CODATA-CHINA, I initiated and convened the Scientific Data Conference with the theme of “Scientific Big Data and Data Science” in China. This was the first national academic conference on scientific data sponsored by CODATA-CHINA. I also initiated the International Training Workshop for Developing Countries on Scientific Data co-sponsored by CAS, CODATA and CODATA-CHINA. The first training workshop in this series was successfully held in 2012 in Beijing. There were fourteen participants from nine developing countries, including Vietnam, India, Afghanistan, Thailand, Mongolia, Nepal, Indonesia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. The Second International Training Workshop for Developing Countries on Big Data for Science was held in June, 2014 in Beijing. There were twenty-one researchers, data managers, and data scientists from ten developing countries including Vietnam, India, Mongolia, Indonesia, South Africa, Kenyan, Tanzania, Columbia, Brazil and Uganda attended the training workshop. Additionally, Paul Uhlir and I have coordinated a series of China-U.S. roundtable meetings on scientific data cooperation from 2006 till now, jointly host by CODATA-CHINA and U.S. National Committee for CODATA, serving as a catalyst and coordinating body for bilateral cooperation on scientific data practices and policies at the academic and national level in each country.

In the future, I will try my best to link international CODATA and CODATA-CHINA, increasing CODATA visibility in China and make it the natural home and focus for Chinese data scientists. I will help to enhance capacity building activities in developing countries, for example, the CODATA-CAS joint training workshop, especially for young data scientists. I will also push forward scientific data citation and publication practices in developing counties. I believe that through these activities I can help CODATA carry out its missions, objectives and key initiatives of Strategic Plan 2013-2018.

This is the fourth in the series of short statements from candidates in the forthcoming CODATA Elections. Paul Laughton is a new candidate seeking election to the CODATA Executive Committee, although he has been strongly involved with the CODATA Early Career Data Professionals Working Group. He is nominated by the South African CODATA National Committee.

“We are living in interesting times regarding the exploration of the potential of data intensive lives. There is so much to be done to enhance data in a meaningful way to improve everyday lives.”

Currently I am a senior lecturer at the Department of the University of Johannesburg at the Department of Information and Knowledge Management. My research interests include data duration and data policy. Through my work I have been exposed to some of the challenges and issues we are facing regarding the management of research data. I am the newly elected chair of the South African CODATA Committee, and I am passionate and insistent on taking up the challenge set out by those who served before me. I have been very actively involved with the CODATA “Young Scientists” or as we are referred to now as the “Early Career Data Professionals (ECDP)”, since Kiev CODATA conference in 2006 I have been working to improve the involvement of early career data professionals in CODATA.

I have had the privilege to work some great people in the CODATA community and I have learned a lot in a relatively short space of time (leaving room for so much more to learn). The South African National CODATA Committee have a strong strategic focus on leveraging research data to reduce the digital divide. We are focused on improving Pan African data sharing relationships as well as with other international institutions. South Africa faces some real landmark challenges with the development of infrastructure and systems to collect, process and store data from the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) telescope in the near future.

As a country on the African continent South Africa is very privileged and benefits greatly from the involvement with CODATA. As a chair of this committee we look to enhance the potential of research data, as we strive to make a difference in the scientific data community.

This is the third in the series of short statements from candidates in the forthcoming CODATA Elections. Mary Zborowski currently serves on the Executive Committee and is seeking re-election.  She is nominated by the Canadian CODATA National Committee.

Mary Zborowski has served on CODATA’s Executive Committee since 2012 (CODATA GA, Taipei) but has been involved with CODATA Canada since 1998. Since 2004, she has been Executive Secretary for the Canadian National Committee for CODATA (CNC/CODATA). Under her management, the CNC has thrived and attracted new key participants from Canada’s principal granting agencies, government departments, collaborative working groups, data-related initiatives, and large scientific research projects such as NEPTUNE Canada and International Polar Year – which projects involve widespread collaboration and result in large data collections. Mary has also been involved with the International Council for Scientific and Technical Information (ICSTI) and was Executive Secretary to the Canadian Research Data Strategy Working Group, a multi-disciplinary group of universities, institutes, libraries, granting agencies, and individual researchers with a shared recognition of the pressing need to deal with Canadian data management issues. (This working group’s most recent success was the Canadian Research Data Summit, which attracted over 150 leading players and decision-makers from government, private sector, academia and non-governmental organizations.)

Mary’s personal enthusiasm and commitment have combined with her organizational abilities to effectively promote many of CNC/CODATA’s initiatives, such as the Sangster Award for young scientists, communicated among all graduate universities in Canada and in similar networks, and awarded biennially in coordination with CODATA’s International Conference. She is editor of the bilingual serial, Report on Data Activities in Canada, presented to CODATA at its General Assemblies as evidence of Canada’s contribution to shared priorities. She is also on the Editorial Board of CODATA’s Data Science Journal, in which journal she also has published articles. She has contributed to CODATA’s Newsletters, and also to publications of own organization, the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and to its networks. NRC ranks CNC/CODATA as one of the highest ranked among its sponsored CNCs, thereby ensuring ongoing support of the Canadian National Committee as well as its involvement with CODATA International.

Mary’s background in atomic and molecular physics was followed by over 20 years’ experience in Library and Information Science, working extensively with databases, catalogues, collaborative projects, and delivery of information services to researchers. She is especially attuned to the complexities relating to the design and delivery of services during times of rapid technological change. Since 2008, Mary worked at the corporate level, preparing ministerial documents detailing NRC’s performance strategy and resultant impact to the Canadian innovation community. In recent years, she has planned and chairs sessions at international conferences held in Canada, for the purpose of promoting the interests of both CODATA and WDS.

Mary has been a technical advisor to CODATA on web and publishing matters since 1998 and it is through her personal and active involvement that CODATA’s web site was moved to a new and economical infrastructure in 2013, then redesigned and re-launched. She is the current Liaison officer to the CODATA Fundamental Constants Task Group and has participated in the successful running of SciDataCon2014 in New Delhi.

This is the second in the series of short statements from candidates in the forthcoming CODATA Elections. Claudio Soares is a new candidate, not currently serving on the Executive Committee.  He is the nominee of IUPAB, the International Union for Pure and Applied Biophysics.

Name of Candidate: Claudio M. Soares

Affiliation: International Union for Pure and Applied Biophysics

Nationality: Portuguese

In nominating Dr. Claudio M. Soares as an Ordinary Member of the CODATA Executive Committee, the IUPAB points out that he has been an active scientist in the fields of biomolecular modelling and simulation and structural bioinformatics for more than 24 years. This mostly computational work is highly relevant, requiring large amounts of data processing and data standards, putting him in a particularly privileged situation to understand and foster CODATA’s mission.

He works in the larger field of structural biology, and has a considerable knowledge and understanding of the importance of structural and sequence data on biomolecules for the advancement of Life and Health Sciences. These two areas (structural and sequence data) are the ones where he can be most useful to the operations of CODATA.

Briefly, Dr. Soares’ scientific and academic experience and contributions include:

• The management and participation in scientific societies (Portuguese Biophysical Society, Portuguese Biochemical Society, IUPAB)
• Chairperson of the Portuguese Biophysical Society between 2002 and 2008
• Experience in the management of academic institutions as Dean of ITQB, a Research and Training Institution belonging to the New University of Lisbon
• Since 1994 he has published 95 research publications (ISI) with a h-factor of 30