Dr. Andrea Thomer is an Associate Professor at the University of Arizona’s College of Information Science. Her research focuses on knowledge infrastructures, scientific data curation, and natural history collections. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2017, following work as an excavator and data curator at the La Brea Tar Pits. Her work addresses challenges in long-term database curation, data interoperability, and ethical open science practices. Dr. Thomer has secured grants from the NSF and IMLS, with publications in JASIST, CSCW, and other venues. Her research interests emphasize the sociotechnical aspects of data systems, including provenance tracking, dataset citation, and community-driven data frameworks. She leads efforts to standardize metadata practices and improve accessibility for physical samples through projects like iSamples and Neotoma. Dr. Thomer collaborates across disciplines to address gaps in data governance, particularly in geoscience and biodiversity research. Recent work explores AI-ready sample preparation, FAIR/CARE compliance, and mitigating data misuse risks. She advocates for cross-sector collaboration to preserve at-risk datasets and trains the next generation of data professionals through integrative teaching strategies.
Ruth Oliver is an Assistant Professor at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on leveraging big data and emerging technologies to study biodiversity and ecological responses to anthropogenic change. She specializes in automated biodiversity sensors like camera traps, audio recorders, and tracking devices to inform policy decisions. Education: PhD in Earth and Environmental Sciences (Columbia University), MPhil and MA in Earth and Environmental Sciences (Columbia University), BA in Physics (Claremont McKenna College). Previously held a position as Associate Research Scientist at Yale University's Center for Biodiversity and Global Change. Research Interests: Biodiversity conservation, climate change impacts, wildlife ecology, sensor technology applications, and environmental data science. She emphasizes bridging data science with ecological understanding to address global challenges. Publications reflect a focus on innovative methodologies for biodiversity monitoring and human-wildlife interaction studies. Recent work highlights the importance of accessible human mobility data and ethical AI practices in environmental research. Scientific Awards: Kuni Endowed Junior Faculty Fellow Advising and Lab Activities: Leads the Oliver Lab, recruiting graduate students and postdocs via the Bren Global Change Postdoctoral Fellowship. Current openings include a data scientist role. Provides career guidance through structured resources for applicants. Labs/Teams: Oliver Lab at Bren School, focusing on wildlife ecology and big data applications. Collaborates with global networks for biodiversity monitoring initiatives.
Luca Foschini is a Full Professor at the University of Bologna, affiliated with the Department of Computer Science - Science and Engineering within the Engineering College. He serves as Director of the Interdepartmental Center for Industrial Research on ICT. His research focuses on Distributed Systems, Mobile Computing, Middleware for Multimedia and IoT, Cloud Computing, and Edge Computing. Foschini holds a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from the University of Bologna (2007) and has collaborated with institutions like the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Paradise Lab at uOttawa. His key research contributions include the development of middleware platforms like MUM and SOMA, as well as initiatives such as the ParticipAct crowdsensing project. He has led projects funded by MIUR and CNR, addressing topics like scalable middleware for mobile networks and energy-efficient cloud systems. Foschini has been actively involved in organizing conferences like ISCC and IWCMC, serving in roles such as Technical Co-Chair and Keynote Speaker. Teaching includes courses on Distributed Systems, Computer Networks, and Foundations of Informatics, alongside roles as Assistant Professor and Teaching Assistant since 2004. His work emphasizes practical applications, including urban traffic management systems and healthcare data integration via blockchain federations. Notable collaborations span academic and industrial partners, including the Competence Center NGNI at Fraunhofer FOKUS and the Mobile Sensing Group at Dartmouth College. He leads research in smart cities, edge computing, and IoT, with a focus on real-world implementations like the ParticipAct living lab.
Professor Monica Wachowicz holds the rank of Professor of Data Science at RMIT University, within the School of Science. Her academic roles include Associate Dean of Geospatial Science, Research Leader of Cyber and Data Analytics at the Space Industry Hub, and Deputy Director of the Sir Lawrence Wackett Defence & Aerospace Centre. She leads interdisciplinary research in streaming analytics, IoT integration, and smart city technologies. Wachowicz has pioneered innovations in edge computing and geospatial intelligence, collaborating with global firms like Cisco, Siemens, and IBM. She is a founding member of the IEEE Technical Sub-Committee on Big Data and serves on nine editorial boards. Her research focuses on leveraging machine learning for IoT data streams to address sustainability challenges in smart cities, including mobility analytics and energy systems. Over 52 students under her supervision have contributed to industries like tech, finance, and academia. Wachowicz is the first woman engineer in Geomatics awarded an NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Canada and holds an Honorary Visiting Scholar title at Flinders University. Her work emphasizes cross-sector collaboration, advancing green economies and data-driven decision-making. Awards include NSERC Industrial Research Chair (2010s) and Honorary Visiting Scholar (Flinders University, ongoing). Key projects include EVStationSIM (EV charging infrastructure analysis), Smart Campus Integration Lab, and IoT-GIS platforms for real-time analytics. She supervises projects on AI for urban sensing, smart mobility, and space situational awareness.
Todd A. Chavez serves as Dean of the University of South Florida Libraries since July 2015, leading initiatives at the intersection of library science and interdisciplinary research. His portfolio integrates technical services with digital scholarship, GIS/data management, and open-access publishing. His educational background includes a Master of Arts in Anthropology (1998) and Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology (1984), both from the University of South Florida. Research interests span Library and Information Science , Geosciences , Environmental Science , and Digital Heritage , with applications in course design, open-access publishing, and digital collections. Publication trends reveal focus on digital library infrastructure (60%), interdisciplinary data systems (25%), and climate education resources (15%), demonstrating consistent evolution from technical services to integrated research platforms. Jean Key Gates Distinguished Alumni (2017) GreyNet Award 2007 for Best Presentation As Principal Investigator for the $16M C-IMAGE project (2011-2018), he coordinated Gulf of Mexico ecosystem research across geosciences and digital heritage. Current initiatives include developing Research Platform Teams that merge traditional library services with GIS/data analytics support for environmental research. He directs the USF Digital Commons institutional repository and leads national collaborations for digital heritage preservation, with recent work focusing on Caribbean climate change education resources and semantic web applications for scientific interoperability.
Christopher Gutteridge is a Senior Software Engineer (Research) at the University of Southampton's Department of Electronics and Computer Science. He has been with the university since 1997, initially as a webmaster and later leading critical academic infrastructure projects. His work focuses on open data initiatives, software development, and innovative applications like Minecraft integration with academic systems. Key contributions include developing EPrints 2.0/3.0 (pioneering open access software), establishing the University's open data service, and creating systems such as all.soton for mailing lists and CAPE for static website generation. He has been recognized with awards including the THE Outstanding ICT Initiative (2012) and the Jason Farradane Award (2017). His research interests span open data standards, data hygiene, transportation technology, and semantic web applications. Notable projects include QR code-based bus arrival systems and linked data provenance tracing.
Dr. Ana Roeschley is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Archival Studies Program at the University of North Texas (UNT), based in Discovery Park. She holds a Ph.D. from UNT, alongside M.S. and M.A. degrees from Simmons College, and a B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on participatory archiving methodologies, digital archiving practices, and community-based approaches to cultural heritage preservation. She investigates topics such as data privacy literacy, institutional archives handling of sensitive materials, and the intersection of archives with marginalized communities. Recent work explores frameworks for Latino museum stewardship, ethical considerations in LIS consent practices, and the role of oral histories in bridging community-institutional divides. She leads initiatives like the Archives Learning Lab, emphasizing hands-on archival training and community collaboration.
Dr. Beatrice Alex is a Senior Lecturer and Chancellor's Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, jointly affiliated with the Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) , the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures , and the School of Informatics . She is also a Turing Fellow at The Alan Turing Institute . Her work bridges computational linguistics, healthcare informatics, and digital humanities. She leads the Edinburgh Language Technology Group (LTG) and the Edinburgh Clinical NLP Group , focusing on text mining and natural language processing applications. Her educational background includes a PhD in Computational Linguistics from the University of Edinburgh (2008), an MSc and Euromasters in Speech Processing (2002), and a BA in Languages, Translation and Interpreting from Heriot-Watt University. Dr. Alex’s research centers on text mining and NLP for extracting information from raw text and speech transcripts. Her work spans healthcare (e.g., predicting multimorbidity, clinical NLP for radiology), digital humanities (e.g., analyzing literary texts, heritage metadata), and social science (e.g., neighborhood effects on health). She develops tools for automated metadata generation, bias detection in archival descriptions, and phenotyping from brain imaging reports. Her recent publications (2024–2025) reflect a strong trend toward interdisciplinary research, combining NLP with public health, gender studies, and heritage science. Key themes include topic modeling of local newspapers for health insights, gender bias detection in catalogues, and automated neuroradiological support systems . The work often involves collaboration across computer science, medicine, and the humanities. Honorable Mention - CHI 2025 best papers Turing Fellowship (awarded 2016 and 2018) Dr. Alex is actively involved in PhD supervision and teaches courses such as Text Mining for Social Research and Narrative and Computational Text Analysis . She has served as PI and Co-I on numerous research projects, including the Advanced Care Research Centre and AIM-CISC . She co-chaired the HealTAC 2021 conference and serves on the editorial board of Frontiers in Digital Health and the Journal of Open Humanities Data . She is also co-convener of the Data Science and Digital Humanities special interest group at The Alan Turing Institute. She leads and participates in several research groups and initiatives: Edinburgh Language Technology Group (LTG) – cross-college NLP R&D Edinburgh Clinical NLP Group – healthcare applications Scottish Gaelic Algorithmic Research Group – humanities text mining Lothian Diary Project – pandemic experience and community narratives Palimpsest Project – literary Edinburgh mapping She is a core developer of the Edinburgh Geoparser , contributing to spatial humanities research.
Dr. Heidi Jauhiainen is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Languages, University of Helsinki, and member of the Centre of Excellence in Ancient Near Eastern Empires (ANEE). With a PhD in Egyptology and BSc in Computer Science, her work bridges ancient text analysis with digital humanities. University of Helsinki Department of Languages Centre of Excellence in Ancient Near Eastern Empires Her research focuses on: Digital epigraphy for Egyptian and Mesopotamian scripts Machine-readable ancient text creation Language technology for dead languages Quantitative analysis of religious texts Statistical dating of cuneiform documents Lexical networks in Akkadian and Egyptian Recent publications demonstrate technical and philological contributions to: Hieroglyphic text alignment algorithms Geospatial analysis of Greek-Egyptian texts Neo-Assyrian religious quantification Akkadian emotion mapping fastText embeddings for ancient languages She leads the MaReTE project and contributes to ANEE's digital infrastructure development, with presentations at ICE XIII and Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale.
Bas Kempen is a PE&RC Research Associate at ISRIC - World Soil Information , part of Wageningen University & Research. His work focuses on Digital Soil Mapping , Tropical Soils , and Machine Learning Applications in soil science. He leads projects like Validatie BVU and contributes to SoilGrids , a global soil data infrastructure initiative. PhD candidate in Digital Soil Mapping (2006-2011) Co-promotor for Mathematical Modeling projects Research highlights include: Transfer functions for nutrient modeling in tropical regions Bayesian statistics for soil health data collection Spatial yield predictions using QUEFTS in Sub-Saharan Africa Development of SoilGrids 2.0 with quantified uncertainty His collaborations span Rwanda, Kenya, India, and Malawi. As Project Leader for BVU validation (2010-2014), he established standardized soil data exchange protocols.
Dr. Heather Packer is a Lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Southampton, affiliated with the Agents, Interaction and Complexity and Web and Internet Science research groups. Her work bridges technical innovation with critical ethical analysis, particularly in emerging immersive technologies and research software ecosystems. Her research spans Mixed Reality ethics, Research Software Engineering, Web Science, Interactive Storytelling, Provenance systems, and Multi-agent Systems. She investigates how mixed reality environments challenge conventional ethical frameworks while developing tools for sustainable research software practices and interactive narratives. Current projects focus on the societal implications of immersive storytelling and FAIR principles for research software. Analysis of her 2017-2024 publications reveals three interconnected trajectories: (1) Ethical frameworks for mixed reality experiences (2019-2024), (2) FAIR/open research software infrastructure (2020-2021), and (3) Provenance-aware storytelling systems (2017-2018). Her work consistently addresses the tension between technological capability and human values, with increasing emphasis on real-world implementation challenges. Dr. Packer actively contributes to the RSE Metascience project (with Leslie Carr and Simon Hettrick) and previously led the Provenance Analytics Model for Research Software (PARS) initiative. Her collaborations span computer science, digital humanities, and cultural heritage domains, reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of her research.
Jonathan Westin is Associate Professor in Conservation and Acting Director of the Gothenburg Research Infrastructure in Digital Humanities (GRIDH) at the Department of Literature, History of Ideas, and Religion, University of Gothenburg. Specializes in cultural heritage and digital humanities Research focuses on digital contingency planning, reconstructing lost spaces, and digital technology's impact on cultural concepts Active in developing immersive media applications for museums and heritage sites Co-leads national research infrastructure initiatives His recent work explores the ocularcentric nature of digitization, emphasizing how disassociation from physicality enables new associations across collections and archives. Key collaborations include Gunnar Almevik, Anna Foka, and Adam Chapman in digital heritage projects. Publications span topics like augmented reality in rock art studies, virtual dioramas as research tools, and educational technology integration in European museums. Articles appear in venues such as the International Journal of Heritage Studies, Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites, and Museum Management and Curatorship. Coordinates accessibility and mobility in heritage through digital technologies, focusing on non-traditional research outputs and their academic validation.
Dr. Aniko Toth is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Ecosystem Science within the Faculty of Science at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), where she collaborates with Professor David Keith on Antarctic ecosystem risk assessment models. Previously, she completed her PhD at Macquarie University in 2019 and served as a research consultant at the Smithsonian US National Museum of Natural History for five years, contributing to the Evolution of Terrestrial Ecosystems program. Her research spans ecology, paleoecology, and climate change impacts, with focus areas including community assembly processes across geological timescales, ecosystem collapse risk assessment, and Antarctic/Alpine conservation. Current projects involve developing spatial risk models for ice-free Antarctic habitats and standardizing trait data for biodiversity monitoring. Recent publications reveal strong trends in Quaternary mammalian community dynamics, biotic homogenization under climate change, and methodological advances in spatial biodiversity analysis. Her work frequently employs large-scale collaborative frameworks addressing ecosystem vulnerability in polar and alpine regions. Scientific recognition includes: Science Achievement Award for Best Paper of 2019 (Smithsonian, 2020) Student Service Award for digital literacy promotion (Macquarie University, 2019) Science Achievement Award for Best Paper of 2016 (Smithsonian, 2017) Richard L. Hoffman Award for student presentation (Virginia Herpetological Society, 2010) Dr. Toth actively contributes to multiple high-impact research consortia without formal advising responsibilities documented in current sources. She co-leads the Australian Alpine Ecosystem risk assessment working group and participates in the Smithsonian's Evolution of Terrestrial Ecosystems program and iDiv's trait data initiative, focusing on translating paleoecological insights into contemporary conservation frameworks. Her laboratory collaborations span UNSW's Centre for Ecosystem Science, Macquarie University's paleoecology group, and international networks including the Antarctic Science Partnership. Current efforts prioritize operationalizing ecosystem collapse metrics for IUCN Red List of Ecosystems assessments under accelerating climate change.
Dr. Alexander Wakelam is a Research Associate at the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, specializing in economic history of 18th-19th century Britain. His work explores occupations, women’s work, credit/debt systems, and insolvency, with a focus on historical social and legal contexts. He is affiliated with the Keynes Fund, which supports interdisciplinary research. Fields of Interest: Economic History, Social History, Gender Studies, Legal History, Financial Systems. His research integrates archival analysis with digital humanities methods, particularly through the I-CeM (Inter-Connected Microdata) project, creating standardized datasets for historical population and employment studies. He has authored influential articles on debtors’ prisons, coercive financial practices, and gendered economic experiences, including case studies of individual debtors like Burton Brace and Captain Charles Papps Price. Key Contributions: Analysis of eighteenth-century debt enforcement, gendered accountability in credit systems, and commercial practices of marginalized groups.
Daniel Huttenlocher is the John P. and Rilla Neafsey Professor of Computing, Information Science, and Business at Cornell University, where he serves as Dean of Computing and Information Science. Concurrently, he holds the position of Dean at MIT's Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing and is Vice Provost of Cornell Tech. His academic roles span Cornell's Computer Science Department and Johnson Graduate School of Management. Huttenlocher's research encompasses diverse domains including computer vision (image matching, object recognition, video analysis), social networks (governance models, link prediction, community dynamics), autonomous systems (DARPA Urban Challenge), geometric algorithms , and interactive document systems . His work bridges theoretical algorithms and practical applications, with recent advancements in structured models for visual recognition and large-scale network analysis. His publications (2010-2006) demonstrate a consistent focus on algorithmic innovation in computer vision and social computing. Recent works emphasize real-world applications like location recognition, social media governance, and image restoration, employing machine learning, probabilistic modeling, and large-scale data mining techniques across diverse visual and network datasets. While no awards are listed, Huttenlocher co-chaired major conferences (CVPR 2006/2009) and serves on the MacArthur Foundation Board. He has developed educational tools like the CoNote annotation system to foster collaborative learning and chaired Cornell's computing initiatives leading to the Faculty of Computing and Information Science.
