Community Engagement Steering Group

Natasha Simons is Director, National Coordination, for the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC). She leads a large, talented team of Program Managers and Subject Matter Experts contributing to deliver ARDC’s strategic Research Data Commons initiatives. Based at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Natasha is passionate about bringing out the best in people and creating high performing teams. She has a high international profile in the area of research data infrastructure and enjoys collaborating to solve common data challenges, particularly through the global Research Data Alliance. Natasha holds a number of positions on international Boards and is co-chair of the DataCite Community Engagement Steering Group and the APAC Expert Group.

Mark is a Product Manager at the Center for Open Science, where they guide the development of the Open Science Framework by translating user needs into actionable improvements. With a background in UX research and human factors, He focuses on creating intuitive workflows that support data sharing and registration. He holds a master’s in Human Factors and Applied Cognition and is passionate about engaging with the research community to build accessible, user-centered tools. As part of DataCite’s Community Engagement Steering Group, he aims to help address community challenges and improve research infrastructure.

Martin is the Digital Preservation Policy and Outreach Specialist at the National Library of New Zealand, where he supports digital preservation capabilities within the Library and works to develop digital preservation communities of practice throughout Aotearoa New Zealand. Martin is also a consortium lead for the New Zealand DOI Consortium, and he is excited to learn more about how to build that community through the work of the CESG. He has a Master’s in Information and Library Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Ginny works on community, membership, and programs at Crossref as their CPO. She founded Metadata 20/20 and Scholarly Social, and serves on the boards or as an advisor of several open infrastructure organisations.

Hana joined the National Library of Technology in Prague in 2022 and is currently the head of its National Centre for Persistent Identifiers. The Centre supports the use of PIDs on the national level and leads the national ORCID and DataCite consortia. Hana has a background in information and library science and has experience with information services in a public institution as well as a multinational private company.

Amy assists members of the Stanford community with sharing and preservation of research outputs in the Stanford Digital Repository (SDR). She is the Product Owner for the SDR’s self-deposit application and co-manages the campus DOI service. Prior to joining Stanford Libraries in 2012, Amy worked on scientific databases in the biotech and biofuels industries, developing methods for collecting and synthesizing sophisticated information into easy-to-understand formats. Amy earned a PhD in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University, where she studied cell cycle regulation in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Fredrick Kiwuwa Lugya is a PhD (Illinois) Library and Information Science graduate certified in Quality Assurance Practice, E-Learning Pedagogy, Library Automation and Digitization, Administrative Law, and Project Monitoring and Evaluation. With over 18 years of experience, he has delivered top-notch information services, including heading the Busitema University (BU) Library. Fredrick is grounded in human information behavior research intersecting the concepts and principles relating to people, information, and systems, with a strong emphasis on context. Before joining BU, Fredrick led the digitisation agenda of Makerere University Library and implemented library technology projects in government and corporate firms.

Alice is a co-founder of the MoreBrains Cooperative, a consulting organization that specializes in — and supports the values of — open research. Her career has spanned both scholarly publishing (at Blackwell Publishing and then Wiley) and research infrastructures — first as Director of Community Engagement & Support of ORCID, and then in a similar role at NISO (National Information Standards Organization). Alice is actively involved in the scholarly communications community, including as President of the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) in 2021-22 and as a regular contributor to The Scholarly Kitchen blog. She is passionate about the need for a robust and open global research infrastructure, and about improving diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility – in scholarly communications and in society at large.

Sheila Rabun is the Program Leader for Persistent Identifier Communities at Lyrasis, where she manages the Lyrasis DataCite US Community consortium and the ORCID US Community consortium. In this role, she works with non-profit organizations across the US to support open research infrastructure by using persistent identifiers to make research and scholarly content more FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable). Sheila has worked in the academic library field since 2010, with a focus on digital workflows, agile project management, communicating technical information to diverse audiences, and advocating for interoperability in cultural heritage, research, and scholarly communication ecosystems.

Carly Robinson is a Senior Policy Fellow at SPARC. She leads SPARC’s efforts to advance policies related to persistent identifiers and metadata standards and contributes more broadly to SPARC’s policy work on open research. Her role also includes exploring the intersection of AI and research access policies, as well as collaborating with SPARC’s broader advocacy team. She has a Ph.D. and M.S. in Atmospheric Chemistry from the University of Colorado, and a B.S. in Applied Physics from Michigan Technological University.

Paula Saavedra is Project Manager at Consortia SAS, where she is the leader of the processes of loyalty, technological project management, management of the DataCite Consortium in Colombia through Papyrus-datos.co and the ORCID Consortium. From Consortia we support institutions to strengthen their research capabilities, high-quality resource consultation and use of persistent identifiers. Paula is a systems engineer with a specialization in IT projects.

Adam is a product specialist focused on persistent identifiers and open research infrastructure. With experience spanning metacognitive learning, bioinformatics, and repository architectures, he works to enhance the discoverability and accessibility of research outputs through robust metadata and PIDs. At Jisc, he supports the UK ORCID consortium and contributes to developing interoperable scholarly infrastructure. His current interests include exploring how global PID networks and metadata standards can advance equitable access to research, while fostering the interconnected nature of scholarly information systems through open infrastructure development.