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Speakers
Meet the IDCC20 Speakers
Francine Berman
Francine Berman is the Edward P Hamilton Distinguished Professor in Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and is spending this year at Harvard as the Katherine Hampson Bessell Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study. Her research and leadership have focused on data stewardship, preservation, and cyberinfrastructure, particularly with respect to the policy, practice, technical infrastructure, and community agreements needed to ensure the integrity and longevity of the data on which modern research relies.
Berman’s current work focuses on Public Interest Technology, and in particular, the social and environmental impact of the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT technologies can be used to make our lives safer, more efficient, and more convenient as well as to disrupt, exploit, bias, bully, and intrude. Berman is exploring the larger social and environmental ecosystem needed to develop an IoT that maximizes benefits, minimizes risk, and promotes individual protections, the public good, and planetary responsibility.
Berman is a co-founder of the international Research Data Alliance and former Director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center. She is a Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), IEEE, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and a member of the Board of Trustees for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. In 2009, she was the inaugural recipient of the ACM/IEEE-CS Ken Kennedy Award for “influential leadership in the design, development, and deployment of national-scale cyberinfrastructure.” In 2015, Berman was appointed by President Obama to the National Council on the Humanities, and in 2019, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Her talk will take place on the 18th of February.
Read interview with Francine, conducted by Timea Biro
The Internet of Things: Utopia or Dystopia?
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a deeply interconnected environment of devices, sensors, and smart systems, generating and exchanging a tsunami of data. IoT technologies such as self-driving cars, precision agricultural systems, and smart home environments can deliver optimization, customization, and efficiency. But IoT technologies can also be used to bias, bully, intrude, and exploit. Depending on how the IoT is developed, evolved and regulated, we can promote its utopian benefits or exacerbate its dystopian risks.
Achieving the benefits of the IoT involves interventions at the design, use and policy levels. In particular, technical innovation must be balanced with social and planetary responsibility, and individual rights and protections must be balanced with business competitiveness. In this talk, Fran Berman will explore what is needed to evolve the IoT to promote the public good, individual protections, and planetary sustainability.
Sandra Collins
Dr Sandra Collins is the Director of the National Library of Ireland. The NLI collects and makes available the recorded memory of Ireland, caring for more than 10 million items, including books, newspapers, manuscripts, ephemera, photographs and digital media. Sandra is originally a mathematician and has worked in digital innovation and cultural heritage over 20 years in the public and private sectors. She was previously the founding Director of the Digital Repository of Ireland in the Royal Irish Academy and a Scientific Programme Manager in the Irish funding agency Science Foundation Ireland. She is a member of the Council of the Research Data Alliance, the Irish National Open Research Forum, the Consortium of National and University Libraries in Ireland, and the Irish Government’s Expert Advisory Group for Commemorations. She has served on a number of European Commission Expert Advisory Groups including Research Infrastructures and FAIR data. She cares about culture for everyone, open data, diversity and inclusion, and tweets at @sandricollins .
Her talk will take place on the 19th of February.
Collecting and Curating the National Memory
What does it mean to collect the memory of a nation?
The National Library is a memory keeper for its country, collecting and keeping safe memories that share the culture, heritage and story of a nation. Memories can be subjective and interpretive, and keeping the authentic memory object is vital. Memory objects can be photographs, manuscripts, letters, ephemera - but contemporary memory objects are increasingly ‘born digital’ and they can be challenging to collect and keep safe as digital technologies become obsolete quickly and the quantity of digital content grows exponentially.
How we collect today will shape the national memory in the future. The National Library of Ireland is working to make a more diverse and inclusive story of Ireland, so that new voices are collected and shared with the world. Dr Sandra Collins will explore the importance of physical and digital collecting and the challenge of digital preservation, and the importance of inclusive and representative curation, motivated by the memory keeping we all do on a personal and family level.
Read interview with Sandra, conducted by Timea Biro
Kostas Glinos
Kostas works at the European Commission, where he leads the unit in charge of Open Science in the directorate general for Research & Innovation since 1 June 2019.
From 2014 to 2019 he led the unit responsible for EU international cooperation policy in STI and for relations with European Economic Area countries, Switzerland, Russia, Western Balkans, Turkey, all of Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
Kostas has been developing EU policy and managing R&D programmes in the area of Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) in Brussels since 1992. Policy areas he has dealt with include open science and innovation, collaboration in research, industry academia interaction, the governance of research commons, public private partnerships, science diplomacy and international cooperation policy at bilateral and bi-regional level. At various points in time he has been responsible for funding programmes in future and emerging technologies, cyber-physical systems, ICT research infrastructure and big research data. In the academic year 2017-2018 Kostas was a visiting Fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore where he taught regionalism in Europe and in Southeast Asia.
Before joining the Commission Kostas worked in the chemical industry in the USA and Belgium, lectured at the University and carried out research in Greece. He holds a PhD in engineering from the University of Massachusetts and an Advanced Professional Certificate in investment management from Drexel University in the USA.
Making Open Science the new normal
The talk will target two enablers of Open Science policies: responsible research data management, in line with the FAIR principles, and the development of supporting infrastructure such as the European Open Science Cloud. Responsible research data management will be key in mainstreaming Open Science policies under the next framework programme, Horizon Europe, through mandatory data management plans for all projects that generate or collect research data, and by introducing data management considerations as an element on which applicants can be evaluated. The European Open Science Cloud is a vibrant and collaborative ecosystem on which strategic work continues to be done along many facets (FAIR, architecture, sustainability, landscape, rules of participation, and training and skills). The European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, set EOSC as a top-level political priority in her World Trade Forum intervention in Davos and the talk will describe how the European Commission is delivering on this priority, while ensuring the maximum community consultation and participation.