Professor Barend Mons
Barend Mons holds a chair in Biosemantics at the LUMC and is one of the scientific directors of NBIC. He also acts as a Life Sciences 'eScience integrator' in the Netherlands eScience centre and participates in Data FAIRport. Currently, he coordinates the creation of the DTL Data programme and in that capacity he is also the scientific representative of The Netherlands in the interim board of the ELIXIR ESFRI project.
Dr Steven Manos
Dr. Steven Manos leads a team of nearly 30 people at the University of Melbourne responsible for digital research platforms, training and engagement. His mission is to lift the digital literacy of the research community by arming them with the digital tools to do what they love, and do it in a more far-reaching and effective way. He does this by building communities, actively training researchers and establishing innovative and extremely usable platforms for research. In the past he did a PhD in Physics at Sydney University and a stint of post-doctoral research at University College London. He lives in Melbourne with his partner and son, and enjoys designing and making furniture.
Dr Kenji Takeda
Dr Kenji Takeda is Solutions Architect and Technical Manager for Microsoft Research. His current focus is helping researchers take best advantage of cloud computing, including through big data and data science approaches, including the Azure for Research programme www.azure4research.com. He has extensive experience in Cloud Computing, High Performance and High Productivity Computing, Data-intensive Science, Scientific Workflows, Scholarly Communication, Engineering and Educational Outreach. He has a passion for developing novel computational approaches to tackle fundamental and applied problems in science and engineering.
Professor Colin Wright
Professor Colin Wright pursued an academic career in Computational Mathematics - including his PhD, research, teaching and PhD graduate supervisions. On retiring as full professor of Computational Mathematics at the University of the Witwatersrand he was granted the rank of Emeritus Research Professor. His senior academic management career included Head of School(s), Executive Dean of the Faculty of Science, Member of the University Council and its Executive and Finance Committees. At Wits he was an executive responsible for Libraries and IT. He led University and ICT Strategy formulation groups.
Dr Nick Tate
Dr Nick Tate is Director of the Australian Government's Research Data Storage Infrastructure (RDSI) project which is based at the University of Queensland (UQ). He is also both Immediate Past President of the Australian Computer Society (ACS) and Chair of the ACS Queensland branch. RDSI is a $50m project funded under the Super Science initiative which is transforming the storage of research data throughout Australian Universities and Research Institutions, through the implementation of a multi-petabyte storage cloud. He is an Adjunct Professor in IT and Electrical Engineering at UQ, has presented widely on both Cloud Computing and Big Data and has written extensively in the Australian Newspaper and elsewhere on these topics.
Professor Paul Bonnington
Prof Paul is the Director of the Monash e-Research Centre, Monash University, and a Professor in the School of Mathematical Sciences. Prof Paul Bonnington is a member of the Go8 Digital Futures group, and the steering committees for the Victorian Life Sciences Computing Initiative (VLSCI) and National Computational Infrastructure’s Specialist Facility for Imaging and Visualisation (MASSIVE). Paul is also a member of CSIRO’s e-Research Council.
Professor Nicola Mulder
Professor Mulder heads the Computational Biology Group (CBIO) at the University of Cape Town (UCT) (http://www.cbio.uct.ac.za). She graduated with a Bachelor degree, cum laude, in Chemistry and Microbiology, and a first class Honours degree in Microbiology, followed by a PhD in Medical Microbiology. She spent 8 years at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) in Cambridge, where she was a Team Leader, responsible for development of bioinformatics resources for the scientific community. At UCT, Prof Mulder’s research focusses on the bioinformatics of infectious diseases, including pathogen and host genomics and biological networks, human variation and disease association studies.
Professor Russ Taylor
Russ Taylor received a B.Sc in Astronomy, from the University of Western Ontario in 1976, and a Ph.D. in Physics (Radio Astronomy) from the University of British Columbia in 1982. He is currently South African Joint Research Chair in Radio Astronomy at the University of Cape Town and University of the Western Cape. Before coming to South Africa in 2014, Professor Taylor was Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Calgary and Director of the three-university Institute for Space Imaging Science. Past positions include: Head of the Department of Physics and Astronomy University of Calgary, Visiting Scientist, U.S. National Radio Astronomy Observatory; Distinguished Visiting Scientist, Australian Commonwealth Industrial Research Organization; Research Associate, University of Manchester, Jodrell Bank Observatory; Research Associate, University of Groningen, Kapteyn Astronomical Laboratory; NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Toronto.