Executive Committee Nominations for 2023-2024

Listed below are the nominees for open positions on the TDWG Executive Committee for terms spanning 2023-2024.

Image by Tim Graf

Nominations are open for positions on the Executive Committee of Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) for terms spanning 2023-2024.

This is an opportunity to lead the development of biodiversity informatics and work with an enthusiastic team to improve the quality and interoperability of biodiversity data.

TDWG is an international organization that promotes the digitization, integration, and sharing of information about the world’s biodiversity. TDWG provides a forum where individuals, projects, and institutions who manage biodiversity data can come together to share expertise and promote interoperability by promulgating standards and best practices. TDWG also publishes the Biodiversity Information Science and Standards (BISS) journal where papers on issues related to information technology and biodiversity science can be published. The TDWG Executive Committee oversees the work of TDWG. It coordinates TDWG’s Interest and Task Groups, manages the review and ratification of standards, manages the organization’s journal, and organizes the annual meeting. These responsibilities are set forth in the Constitution and detailed further in a supplementary document.

Positions on the executive are staggered two-year terms, such that no more than half of the Committee will be new each year. Towards the end of every calendar year, TDWG holds elections for terms that are expiring and need to be filled for the coming year. Officers elected this year will serve terms in the caledar years 2023 and 2024. The the schedule and procedures for nominations and the election are detailed below, followed by open positions, their responsibilities, and nominees.

Nomination procedure

To nominate someone for one of the positions above, first confirm that the nominee is willing to accept the responsibilities of the office. Then work with the nominee to send a brief statement of the nominee’s background and vision (maximum 400 words) to the TDWG Secretary (secretary@tdwg.org). Self nominations are accepted. All nominations must be complete and received before 07 November 2022.

Election procedure

The TDWG Secretariat will post the names of nominees below and with links to their statements background and vision. Shortly after nominations are closed, the Secretariat will distribute ballots to all institutional and individual members in good standing. In the case of institutional members, we will notify the primary and secondary contacts, but only one ballot response will be accepted. If you are uncertain about your membership status, please inquire with the TDWG Treasurer (treasurer@tdwg.org). Institutional ballots will be weighted as five individual ballots.

General responsibilities

All officers, including subcommittee chairs, have voting rights on the Executive Committee, and are expected to participate in the Committee’s conference calls, which are generally every two weeks. Executive Committee members are expected to find their own support to attend the annual conference.

Offices open for election

All serving terms 2023-2024, except Deputy Chair, which entails an additional committment of two years as Chair.

Deputy Chair

Responsibilities (serves as Deputy Chair 2023-2024, then as Chair 2025-2026)

Nominee
David Bloom - VertNet, Berkeley CA
Background
I have been the VertNet project manager since 2010, with 15 years of prior experience working in natural history and science museums. Currently, I am the VertNet Node Manager to GBIF (since 2016), serve as the GBIF Regional Representative for North America and support the global biodiversity community of practice as a guide, trainer, mentor, and Open Data Ambassador. I work with data publishers and biodiversity-focused projects in every global region. My participation with TDWG is closely tied to my work with VertNet and GBIF, with contributions to the maintenance of the Darwin Core, the creation of the Latimer Core, and participation on several work and interest groups since 2016. I have conducted more than 70 workshops globally on biodiversity informatics ranging from georeferencing to data publishing and the use of biodiversity data.
Vision
As a professional (and a not-so professional) I have devoted my time and effort to the discovery, development, and implementation of tools, services, and solutions to make the lives of people who work with, and learn about, biodiversity data more productive and efficient. As Deputy Chair of TDWG I intend to continue these efforts and to focus my activities on TDWG’s on-going initiatives. I am keen to understand and apply the lessons learned about participation in and collaboration through TDWG during the Covid years. In particular, I want to focus on the ways in which TDWG engages with the community to share knowledge and get work done. I want to retain and expand the participation of people online while respecting the time and money of those people able to participate in person so that we can make the most of both of these communities. I am especially interested to find ways to help TDWG value the efforts of those individuals and groups that do the work to develop, maintain and expand the standards that bring us all together. Finally, I believe it is in the interest of the TDWG community to find ways to engage with traditional, indigenous and local knowledge holders and to find ways to further integrate their perspectives, needs, and experiences into TDWG workflows and products.

Secretary

Responsibilities

Nominee
Visotheary Ung - Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris
Background
I am a biologist by training, I have a masters degree in population genetics but started my professional career at the CNRS (French national center of scientific research) working as a network and systems administrator for 7 years. In 2007, I came back to my first love in science: Systematics, and in 2008 started to attend TDWG meetings as the scientific communication officer for the Xper research group in Paris. In that role, I had the chance to be involved in European projects (EDIT and ViBRANT) which showed me that collaborative work is the key to success. At the same time, I started a PhD on Southeast Asian biogeography and methodology for comparative biogeography which I defended in 2013. I am now a biodiversity informatics project manager and biogeographer based at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris.
I am French and grew up in Paris, but was born in Phnom-Penh (Cambodia). I am very proud of my dual culture, which I see as a richness and I am convinced of its good influence on me. Being part of two different cultures, two different worlds has taught me that it is always possible to build bridges, to bring people together. This is exactly what TDWG is about: to bring together biologists, scientists and developers with the purpose of providing the whole community with standards, best practices and tools.
Vision
My first TDWG meeting was in 2008 in Fremantle and I have not missed one ever since. I am thrilled to be more involved in TDWG activities. As Secretary, I will focus on maintaining good communications within our community: among the Executive Committee, members of TDWG Interest and Task Groups and users of TDWG standards.
I see my role as a connecting hub between everyone, providing clear communication about our processes (creation and use of TDWG standards) and documentation. I have a will to support all members of the Executive Committee, especially our chair and hope to be a good proxy.
I strongly believe that standards are essential to improve biodiversity data sharing and implementing interoperability of software and systems. TDWG standards have been key to my own research and I will continue pushing forward their use within my research community, locally at the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle and on a larger scale to the French scientific community.

Fundraising and Partnerships, Chair

Responsibilities

Outreach and Communications, Chair

Responsibilities

Nominee
Mareike Petersen - Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin
Background
For the past eight years, I have been involved in various national and international research projects to improve access to and use of natural science collections. I am interested in advancing data linkage mechanisms and optimizing the management of research and collection data and its open access. I am a biologist by training with a scientific background in herpetology (amphibian ecology and taxonomy). At the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin (MfN), I am leading the science data and media management team, work on the mobilization of content to subject-specific and cross-domain portals (e.g. GBIF or Europeana), open access to research data, and on the application and further development of data standards (e.g. in the context of TDWG). Recently, I am strongly involved in the multifaceted information management linked to the digitization project of MfNs’ collections and in the development and establishment of the European research infrastructure DiSSCo (e.g. leading Work package and tasks in DiSSCo Prepare, contributing to Synthesys+). In order to open up information from research processes and information about objects in research collections, to enrich it semantically, and to make it accessible for further use, I bridge the gap between the requirements of research, management of research collections, and the technical implementation by developers. Solving these tasks in an interdisciplinary team is often challenging, but at the same time, it enriches my daily work.
Vision
I am enthusiastic about TDWG complexity and member several Interest and Task Groups and in addition since 2020 Chair of the subcommittee ‘Outreach and Communication’. During the last two years, the subcommittee re-worked TDWGs Vision and Mission Statement in an inclusive process and developed a new logo to increase TDWGs memorability. I would like to further work on a better visibility of TDWG, its standards and their application, importantly also beyond the biodiversity informatics and natural science domain through new communication material and channels. TDWGs’ key messages and achievements need to be transported to stakeholders and potential new user groups around the world, even in in current times, where travelling and meetings in person are limited or impossible at all.

Regional Representative for Africa

Responsibilities

Nominee
Ian Englebrecht - Natural Science Collections Facility, South Africa
Background
I am currently employed with the Natural Science Collections Facility (nscf.org.za) in a capacity to coordinate digitization of museum and herbarium collections in South Africa, as well as driving skills development for biodiversity informatics within this community. My primary training is as a conservation biologist and arachnologist. I have a special interest in taxonomy of scorpions and mygalomorph spiders, and completed my PhD in 2015 through the University of Pretoria. I have a long standing interest in information systems and how they support decision making and knowledge management, and studied programming part time early in my career. I have worked in museum institutions, government conservation agencies, and the private sector. I currently participate in the TDWG Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) meetings with an interest in APIs and identifiers. I especially enjoy developing software tools and utilities to aid with data management tasks, and teaching others to do the same.
Vision
My vision is a vibrant African specimen collections digitization and biodiversity informatics community that shares and publishes data willingly and openly. Skills and capacity development are in my view the most important priorities for achieving this vision. I see participation in TDWG events, as well as others such as the iDigBio events, as an essential part of this capacity development process, and would value the opportunity to play a role in broadening participation and interest in TDWG activities within the wider African community. I also hope that my experience and technical background would bring some value to the TDWG Executive Committee in achieving its goals and objectives.

Regional Representative for Asia

Responsibilities

Nominee 1
Vijay Barve - Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, CA, USA
Background
I work as Digitization Project Manager for DigIn (Documenting Marine Biodiversity through Digitization of Invertebrate Collections). I got my master degree in Computer science from India and joined a non profit organization, contributing in Medicinal Plants Documentation and Conservation Issues. I developed interest in Biodiversity Informatics and joined a PhD program in Geography at University of Kansas. My doctoral research focused on Citizen’s contribution to Biodiversity data generation. After receiving my PhD, I worked with the Florida Museum of Natural History and Purdue University as a postdoctoral researcher, and continued to work on Biodiversity Informatics. My research interest is Citizen Science in Biodiversity and has several research publications on that theme. I have been coordinating several Citizen Science initiatives in India in the field of Biodiversity. I am recipient of the GBIF Young Researcher award during his doctoral research and two times member of the team receiving the GBIF Ebbe Nielsen Award. I have been training participants from several countries in Africa, Asia and the Americas in Biodiversity Informatics and have been mentoring students for Google Summer of Code. I have been part of the GBIF regional support team for Asia and have worked with several teams of biodiversity researchers to help publish data on GBIF. I am a contributor to Audubon Core Data standard and a member of the Program Committee for TDWG 2021 and 2022.
Vision
Biodiversity Informatics use and users in Asia are growing. GBIF data usage statistics shows Asian countries in the top ten, but the engagement of these researchers in the TDWG community is minimal. To fill this gap, we need to reach out to the community through appropriate forums and raise awareness regarding the data standards and practices TDWG is developing and promoting. I am working with several institutions and researchers in Asia and Africa already. Serving as Asia Representative would give me more opportunities to reach out to the community and engage them with TDWG. I would continue to help organize Asia and Global south focused symposia in upcoming TDWG conferences.
Nominee 2
Takeru Nakazato - Biological Resource Center, National Institute of Technology and Evaluation (NITE), Tokyo, Japan
Background
My original background was in molecular biology. I earned my master’s degree by investigating the genetic mechanisms and physiological phenotypes of fish that can live in extreme environments, or both freshwater and seawater. I then completed my PhD in bioinformatics, working on functional annotation of large-scale gene expression data. I worked for 15 years at the Database Center for Life Sciences (DBCLS) in Japan, where I was involved in the standardization and integration of various life science data using Semantic Web technologies, and the development and operation of a search engine for public data of a massively parallel DNA sequencing (NGS) in cooperation with the DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ), the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC) member.
Currently, I am with the Biological Resource Center (NBRC), the National Institute of Technology and Evaluation (NITE), which distributes bioresources, and I am involved in developing their databases.
In addition, I am also a citizen scientist. I collect, raise, and mount butterflies and beetles on my own. I am also deeply involved in the community to promote biodiversity informatics in Japan, working with researchers in bioinformatics and natural history museums.
Vision
TDWG2024 is planned to be held in Okinawa, Japan. I am already hard at work preparing for it. The activities of TDWG are open to the world, but unfortunately, only a small number of participants from Asia attended the annual meeting in recent years. Especially through TDWG2024, which will be held in Asia for the first time in many years, I hope to increase the number of people in Asia who are interested in TDWG’s activities and enhance the presence of Asia’s rich biodiversity.
I have a strong interest in the interplay between biodiversity and genetic sequence data. Bioinformatics and biodiversity informatics face the same challenges of standardization of data but have tried to solve them individually. As a bridge between the two, I would like to contribute to making it easier for researchers to approach various data from both biodiversity and sequence perspectives.

Regional Representative for Europe

Responsibilities

Nominee
Laurence Livermore - The Natural History Museum, London
Background
I am passionate about open data and increasing collaboration and community building to enable better data mobilisation from natural history collections. I have been working on community projects in Europe for over ten years, including two iterations of the EC-funded SYNTHESYS projects, ICEDIG, DiSSCo Prepare and Mobilise projects. Recently, this has included the proposal writing and leading the collaborative development of Specimen Data Refinery platform in SYNTHESYS+ and the managing the creation of Digitisation Guides for DiSSCo Prepare.
I am an active participant in SPNHC and CETAF (especially the Digitisation Working Group), and intend to remain active during my potential tenure. I have extensive experience of collaboration outside of Europe, including delivering e-taxonomy training in four continents, delivering a GBIF BID workshop in Jamaica, and digitisation of Malaysian collections as part of national digitisation initiative. I attended my first TDWG conference in 2014 (slides), and have attended all in-person European conferences since (2019 and 2022). Both myself and my digitisation team use TDWG standards on a day-to-day basis in our projects and are keen to give more user feedback on implementation and use.
I am an experienced editor of formal publications (Zootaxa, ZooKeys, BDJ) and for special collections. For examples of community presentations and outreach see my Figshare profile.
Vision
There are multiple exciting initiatives across Europe which will benefit from global connectivity, including the continued development of DiSSCo and the establishment of national DiSSCo nodes.
As Regional Representative for Europe, I would maintain and strengthen connections between the other Regional Representatives and promote TDWG’s role in developing and promoting the use of biodiversity data standards. DiSSCo, and related initiatives around the world (e.g., GBIFs regional programmes, iDigBio, and ALA), are more effective and efficient when they collaborate and share approaches. Our community still has more to gain from establishing more shared practices, protocols, and training programmes. I would like to promote the co-development of more regional initiatives, or at least help connect people and initiatives that have the potential to benefit by working together.
I am keen to promote wider participation in SPNHC and will ensure TDWG’s work is brought to CETAF’s Digitisation Working Group and Information Science and Technology Committee. Over the next two years I will be working to develop the DiSSCo-UK node and want to ensure that our work benefits the wider community, that we implement TDWG standards, and encourage wider participation in TDWG activities.

Regional Representative for Latin America

Responsibilities

Nominee
Paula Zermoglio - VertNet, Bariloche, Argentina
Background
I am a biologist, and my scientific background is in insect ecology and physiology. I got my masters degree in biological sciences at the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina), and a dual PhD in biological sciences at the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina) and the University of Tours (France). For the last ten years, aside from my scientific research activities, I have been involved in biodiversity informatics. My first steps were at the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales, first as an intern and then coordinator of a collections digitization initiative. Back then, realizing the importance and necessity of data sharing using standards, pushed me to get involved in the biodiversity informatics community. I had a lot to learn (still have!), but more importantly, I had a will to share what I was learning. Since then, I have participated in data mobilization initiatives and I have provided training on data mobilization, data standards, data quality and georeferencing, nationally and internationally. I am currently part of the VertNet team and I have been involved with the GBIF community in mentoring and capacity building in Africa, Europe, South America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific regions. In the last years I have been increasingly involved in the biodiversity data standards community. Currently, at TDWG, I am a member of the Data Quality Interest Group, where I convene the “Vocabularies” task group (officially “Best practices for development of vocabularies of values”), and of the Darwin Core Maintenance Interest Group.
Vision
I firmly believe that progress towards better standards and their better use depends on a two-way relationship: TDWG reaching out to the broad community and the community reaching out to TDWG.
As TDWG Latin America Representative, my focus will be on closing the gap between TDWG and the local community, fomenting TDWG adoption of regional-friendly approaches, encouraging greater participation of the region in the development and enhancement of TDWG standards and promoting their use. My approach will be centered on improving communication between regional stakeholders and TDWG. For instance, considering the diversity of backgrounds, understanding and needs in the region, I will create opportunities for the region to engage with TDWG by fostering dissemination of TDWG contents in the local languages.
More broadly, as member of the Executive, I will work towards a better integration of TDWG standards across the global community, both from the technical and the social points of view.

Regional Representative for North America

Responsibilities

Nominee
Chandra Earl - Bishop Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii
Background
Chandra received her PhD from the University of Florida where her work bridged many facets of informatics and data science, with a focus on large-scale biodiversity informatics. She is currently applying these skills to Pacific Island biodiversity, primarily making these data research-grade and available to data aggregators and island researchers. She was an active member of the TDWG 2022 Conference Program Committee and was integral to the success of the hybrid meeting. She has already expressed a keen interest in being involved with the planning of TDWG 2023 hosted in Tasmania and TDWG 2024 in Okinawa. Her current location in Hawaii provides an important geographical linkage between the Asia-Pacific, Oceania and North America.
Vision
If elected as Regional Representative, her vision will be focused on greater representation within early career researchers, students and those researching relatively understudied taxonomic groups across North America. While DarwinCore (and by extension the TDWG community) is well known within the museum and digitization communities, there are many who have unique use cases that may be overlooked due to taxonomic biases in funding. She would also like to focus on a greater awareness of TDWG within younger researchers and providing clear benefits for entry into the community.