Category: EC Elections

Candidates for the 2026 ISB Executive Committee

The ISB EC election runs form September 21- Oct 2. To receive a ballot you need to be an active ISB member as of Sept 16th, 2026. All ISB members should receive a ballot in their email using the address associated with their ISB membership.

There are 5 open positions on the EC this year.

Candiates

  • Charles Tapley (Charlie) Hoyt
  • Christopher Southan
  • Frederique Lisacek
  • Henry Njoku
  • Luana Licata
  • Lyndon Zass
  • Marc E Gillespie
  • Dr. Nivedita Yadav
  • Simona Panni
  • Ziwei Pan

Candidate Biosketches and Statements

Charles Tapley (Charlie) Hoyt

RWTH Aachen University, Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, Aachen, DE

I am a mid-career academic researcher with interest in biocuration, bioinformatics, software development, and open science. I have developed and maintain several curated resources (e.g., Bioregistry), data standards (e.g., SSSOM), software packages (e.g., curies); contribute frequently to external curated resources (e.g., several ontologies); participate in international community projects (e.g., OBO Foundry); and send unsolicited pull requests with drive-by curations to your (open) curated resource. I write about these on my blog (https://cthoyt.com) and host the ISB’s podcast “Curate This!” (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYM0tkKvhlX54EMQGIbAOOhMKlDDPF21P).

I have served on the ISB Executive Committee since Winter 2023 after being elected in the same year when I co-chairing the ISB’s 16th Annual International Biocuration Conference in Padua, Italy and won the ISB’s Early Career Award. In my three year term, I have acted as the EC’s Deputy Chair (under Sue Bello), chaired the Training and Outreach Committee, and maintained the ISB website. My goals continue to be to expand the ISB beyond the typical centers in North America, Britain, and Switzerland – both throughout international, in Europe, and in Germany (my country of residence) by strengthening ties with the German National Data Infrastructure (NFDI) project.

Christopher Southan

University of Edinburgh

Details @ .linkedin.com/in/cdsouthan and ORCID 0000-0001-9580-0446. Curating drug target sequences 1995 to 2007 at SmithKline Beecham, Gemini Genomics, Oxford Glycosciences and AstraZeneca, 2008/9 collating database information for the ELIXIR project @ EBI, full time curator 2012-18 for Guide to Pharmacology, University of Edinburgh (PMID: 41160876, 2026) and since 2016 SAB member for BindingDB advising on the curation of SAR data from patents PMID: 39574417, 2024)

Intersections outlined in Biosketch give me decades of biocuration experience to bring to the EC. Note also two reviews “Opening up connectivity between documents, structures and bioactivity” PMID: 32280387 and “Challenges of Connecting Chemistry to Pharmacology: Perspectives from Curating the IUPHAR/BPS Guide to PHARMACOLOGY” PMID: 30087946. Would like to see ISB develop the application of AI tools to assist biocuration and automated analysis of results. I could also encourage and facilitate more attention to the value of patent data curation.

Frederique Lisacek

Proteome Informatics Group,SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Geneva, CH

PhD in Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence) from the University Pierre & Marie Curie, Paris, France in 1984. From 1985 to 1998, held research positions in biology labs in France, Japan and Australia working on knowledge representation and predictive methods based on sequence analysis. Successively worked in two biotech companies leading projects on knowledge management and mining in Proteome Systems Ltd in Sydney, Australia (1999-2000) and in Geneva Bioinformatics (GeneBio) S.A, Switzerland (2001-2005). Joined the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics in the Proteome Informatics Group in 2006. Manages the group since 2008 driving knowledge discovery projects in proteomics and glycomics. Specialised in glycoinformatics since 2010.

My input to biocuration has been steady over the past two decades but not in the forefront; it encompasses contributions to text mining methods, ontology definition and database development. Since 2010, I have specialised in glycoscience a source of many bioinformatics challenges, somehow a niche research topic though slowly but surely expanding. Our issues span data standardisation, formalisation, and curation. Our community struggles to produce reliable computational solutions for we need to handle the sparsity and the heterogeneity of glycodata.
I have been part of the EC for the past three years and mainly contributed with my experience and energy in reflecting and acting on positioning biocuration 1) in the AI era and 2) in new parts of the world. We have together with the team shaped some initiatives such as co-organising for the first time the Annual meeting on the African continent, thereby including so far non-reached communities. I would like to pursue these activities for another mandate and broaden our current ideas with those of newcomers.

Henry Njoku

Bioinformatics software engineering, University of Ibadan, Nigeria

Henry Njoku is a bioinformatician and digital health professional with experience in biological data management, research infrastructure, and capacity development across sub-Saharan Africa. As a PhD candidate in Bioinformatics at the University of Ibadan (UI) and a Research Assistant/Bioinformatics Systems Administrator with the UI Bioinformatics Group and H3ABioNet UI node, he supports the stewardship, accessibility, and effective use of biological and genomic data through the administration of bioinformatics platforms, computational workflows, and user-support systems. His work contributes to the generation, organization, annotation, and dissemination of high-quality biological data, while promoting reproducibility and FAIR data principles within the African research community. He has also played a key role in training graduate students in bioinformatics tools and data management practices, strengthening local capacity for data-driven life science research. Beyond genomics, he drives initiatives that integrate health, climate, and environmental datasets to support infectious disease surveillance and forecasting, advancing the curation and reuse of multidisciplinary data resources for public health impact. His combined expertise in bioinformatics, data stewardship, open science, research support, and governance positions him to contribute meaningfully to the ISB’s mission of enhancing the quality, accessibility, and long-term value of biological knowledge.

My motivation to serve on the ISB Executive Committee is based on the belief that biocuration is fundamental to the process of turning biological data into information that is reliable, accessible, and reusable to advance research and public health. I am an IT Project Manager with over 10 years of leading a highly motivated team of IT tools development. I am also involved with the Systems Administration of the UI Bioinformatics Group and H3ABioNet UI node where I support graduate students with bioinformatics infrastructure, data management workflows, computational pipelines and user training. In addition to technical contributions, I have more than a decade of experience leading digital health and data-driven projects, including the construction of interoperable health information systems and collaborative platforms that enable data exchange and reuse. I also drive governance by being on the CSIDNet Governance Committee, helping with transparent decision-making and community involvement. I would like to see more support in ISB for building biocuration capacity in underserved regions, more integration of health, genomic and environmental data resources, more opportunities for mentoring early-career curators and engagement with open science initiatives. I am dedicated to contributing to ISB to increase its global influence, and to make the biocuration community more diverse, inclusive and sustainable.

Luana Licata

Department of Biology, University of Rome Tor Vergata

I work as Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at the Tor Vergata University of Rome, Italy and I am the scientific coordinator of MINT, the Molecular INTeraction database (ELIXIR Core Data Resources).
My scientific research focuses on the analysis of biological networks, with the aim of understanding the molecular mechanisms involved in complex diseases such as neurodevelopmental disorders and cancer.
I have been working for over 20 years both as a curator and a team coordinator of MINT and SIGNOR, a database that collects experimental verified causal relationships between biological entities. I have collaborated with other research groups in the development, organization and/or curation of several Bioinformatics Resources such as, virusMINT, Complex Portal, DISNOR, CancerGeneNet.

I am a member of the Italy ELIXIR Training Team which has the aim to produce quality training in bioinformatics in order to achieve excellence in life science research. I am also a trainer in Bioinformatics courses on Network Biology, Bioinformatics tools to study protein-protein interactions and Use of Standards, Controlled Vocabularies and Ontologies.
I have experience in organizing biocuration meetings and I am currently a member of the ISB Executive Committee, and I am excited to continue serving the biocuration community in this capacity. Over the past terms, I have contributed as part of the Training, Outreach, and Communication group, coordinated the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Committee, and served as editor of the ISB newsletter. These roles have given me a broad view of the challenges and opportunities facing our community, from ensuring early-career curators have access to training and mentorship, to making sure ISB’s communications reflect the diversity and global reach of its membership. If re-elected, I would like to see continued investment in training pipelines for new curators, stronger outreach to underrepresented regions, and expanded opportunities for cross-database collaboration.

Lyndon Zass

University of Cape Town

I am a Project Manager and data specialist in the Computational Biology Division at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, with a background in Molecular Biology and Human Genetics. My work sits at the intersection of genomics, bioinformatics, public health, and data science, with a particular focus on improving the accessibility, standardisation, biocuration, harmonisation, and reuse of African biomedical and genomic data. I currently serve as the Project Manager of the African Genomics Data Hub (AfriGen-D), an initiative focused on curating African genomic data and metadata, and making it more findable, accessible, and useful for research and precision medicine. I also previously co-led the eLwazi Open Data Science Platform’s Data Support Working Group, where I supported the application of data models, ontologies, and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles to African health and biomedical datasets. My research and professional interests include the biocuration of African genomics data, phenotype harmonisation, biomedical data standards, African genomic representation, and strengthening data infrastructure, resources and capacity for biomedical research across the continent.

I am motivated to serve on the ISB Executive Committee because my work at the University of Cape Town increasingly intersects with biocuration, data stewardship, genomics, bioinformatics, and the development of sustainable research data infrastructures. Through initiatives such as the African Genomics Data Hub (AfriGen-D), I work with metadata standards, data models, ontologies, data harmonisation, and data-quality practices that are fundamental to effective biocuration and the responsible reuse of biological, biomedical, and health data. I believe I would bring a valuable African perspective to the ISB, particularly an understanding of the infrastructural, capacity, funding, and data-governance challenges faced by researchers and institutions across the continent. I would like to contribute to making the Society increasingly inclusive and globally representative, while creating greater opportunities for African researchers to participate in and shape the international biocuration community. My engagement with the ISB reached a significant milestone in 2026 when I co-chaired the organisation of the 19th Annual International Biocuration Conference in Cape Town—the first ISB annual conference held on the African continent. This was an immensely valuable and significant experience that deepened my appreciation for the field of biocuration, the ISB and its international community. I would now like to build on this experience by contributing to the ISB’s leadership, growth, and global impact.

Marc E Gillespie

Pharmacuetical Sciences, St. John’s University, Queens, NY USA

I put my interest in ISB into practice 4 years ago when I joined the ISB Executive Committee, where examples of my recent work include amending the ISB Articles of Association, chairing and co-organizing the AI in Curation workshop at Biocuration 2026, a chance to bring the community together around a topic that is already reshaping how we all do this work. Outside the ISB, I serve on ASBMB’s Public Affairs Advisory Committee, a role that keeps me close to the broader conversation about how science policy and biological knowledge infrastructure is changing, a conversation I think the ISB needs to be squarely part of.
I am a Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at St. John’s University in Queens, NY, USA, and serve as Editor-in-Chief and co-PI on the Reactome Project (reactome.org). My work in biocuration began when I joined the Reactome Team in 2003, a fantastic project and a great time to start in biocuration. As with many groups, Reactome curators grew with the biocuration field, inventing methods and practices as we moved along. I continue to work within the community, meeting many of you along the way.

My interest in joining ISB leadership began at the 2014 Biocuration meeting. Along with Francis Ouellette and Robin Haw, I had the chance to co-chair the 2014 Biocuration meeting in Toronto, CA, at a time when the ISB was growing. The diversity of the members and attendees at biocuration meetings is a strength and a challenge for the society. Working across platforms and fields during the pandemic reminded me again that biocuration is a big tent encompassing many different fields. I believe that with AI, the need for biocuration is growing, and that the field needs leadership that can bring the benefits of biocuration to an expanding group of stakeholders, many of whom work in curation roles but don’t know the ISB exists. We need clear, straightforward support for expanding the ranks of the society. I am very interested in expanding and defining the practicalities and benefits of ISB membership. I think we must explore which other societies and fields we should align with. The value of the ISB hinges on the support and resources that it provides new, mid-career, and experienced biocurators.

Dr. Nivedita Yadav

Indian Biological Data Centre, Regional Centre for Biotechnology, Faridabad, India

Dr. Niveditaa Yadav, M Tech and PhD in Bioinformatics and Data Curator at the Indian Biological Data Centre (IBDC), Regional Centre for Biotechnology (RCB), with expertise in computational biology, genomics, biological data analysis, and biocuration. Her professional work focuses on the curation, validation, standardization, and management of biological research data, with particular emphasis on developing high-quality metadata for national biological data repositories, including the Indian Phenom Repository. She contributes to improving data quality, interoperability, accessibility, and adherence to FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) principles. Her experience also includes genomic data analysis and supporting the development of robust workflows for biological data submission and archival. Through her work at IBDC, she contributes to building sustainable national data infrastructure and enabling researchers to discover, access, and reuse biological datasets. Her interests lie at the intersection of biocuration, bioinformatics, genomics, data infrastructure, and Open Science, with a focus on strengthening data-driven and reproducible life-science research in India.

I am motivated to serve on the ISB Executive Committee because I see biocuration as a critical foundation for reliable, reproducible, and reusable biological research. As a Data Curator at the Indian Biological Data Centre (IBDC), RCB, I work at the intersection of biocuration, bioinformatics, genomics, and scientific data infrastructure. My experience includes curating and validating biological datasets, developing standardized metadata for national repositories such as the Indian Phenom Repository, and promoting FAIR data practices.
I would bring to the Executive Committee practical experience from a national-scale biological data infrastructure, particularly perspectives from the rapidly developing research ecosystem in India and the Global South. I hope to contribute to strengthening collaboration among curators, researchers, and data scientists, while promoting recognition and professional development of biocurators.
Within ISB, I would particularly like to see further development of training and mentorship opportunities, community-building initiatives, standardized biocuration practices, FAIR/Open Science, and greater engagement with emerging data-rich fields and researchers from underrepresented regions. I would be honoured to contribute to making ISB a more inclusive, connected, and impactful global biocuration community.

Simona Panni

DiBEST Department, University of Calabria

Simona Panni is Associate Professor in Molecular Biology and Senior Researcher at the University of Calabria. She holds a Master Degree in Biological Sciences from University of Rome Sapienza and a Postgraduate Diploma in Applied Biotechnology (PhD equivalent) from University of Tor Vergata. In her early career, she has been studying protein binding domains for over a decade, achieving a strong background in molecular approaches to study protein-protein interactions and she has collaborated with MINT database. In 2015 and 2016 she has joined the IntAct team as visitor to contribute in developing standards and CV terms to annotate ncRNA interactions (discussed and approved in the HUPO-PSI meeting in Ghent, 2016). Since then, she has been collaborating with IntAct database to annotate non coding RNA interactions, focusing on the model organism S. cerevisiae and on human microRNAs. She is actively participating in the IMEx (International Molecular Exchange) Consortium activities and meetings and has joined several ISB meetings both in presence and online. She has been member of the MC for the COST Action “Gene Regulation Ensemble Effort for the Knowledge Commons” and she has joined the Elixir Biocuration Focus Group till 2025. Relevant publications can be found at https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=L2swCTwAAAAJ&hl=it

I am running for a position on the Executive Committee because I believe that high-quality, expertly curated biological data are becoming increasingly important for both experimental research and computational biology. During my research activity, in the fields of molecular interactions and biological networks, I have experienced first-hand how differences in annotation standards, data formats and levels of curation can strongly influence downstream analyses and their reproducibility. In particular I would like to contribute to the ISB community by promoting a wider adoption of common standards and controlled vocabularies among resources collecting ncRNA interactions. An important area is also the relationship between biocuration and artificial-intelligence approaches. AI can support data extraction and annotation, but its reliability depends on well-defined rules and continued expert supervision. ISB could play a leading role in defining good practices for AI-assisted biocuration and in providing training for curators and researchers. I would also like to support initiatives that increase interaction between biocurators, database developers and data users, helping researchers better understand the value of professional biocuration and encouraging their active contribution.

Ziwei Pan

Sage Bionetworks

I am a computational biologist at Sage Bionetworks, where my work sits between analysis and curation across several federally funded data coordination programs. I implement modular pipelines, establish standardized QC, and perform analysis across NGS modalities to harmonize data from multiple sources and support downstream research. I work closely with data managers and curators to develop data standards, metadata models and intake templates for our data coordinating centers to ensure data meet FAIR expectations. I also provided user feedback on AI-assisted internal metadata annotation workflows.
Before Sage, I received my PhD in Biomedical Science from the University of Connecticut, where I co-led the first systematic benchmark of analytical tools on public datasets and established the evaluation metrics that guide tool selection for methylation calling.
My recent service includes the Review Committee for the Bioinformatics Open-Source Conference (BOSC) 2026 and the Advisory Committee for the 2026 MC² Center Virtual Symposia. I used to serve as a Vice President of Outreach for a Women in Science and Engineering Group (an employee resource group) before to coordinate with external institutions and speakers to support seminars, partnerships, and engagement activities. I also have experience in outreach, scientific communication, and consulting strategy.

My intersection with biocuration came through my work. I was hired as a computational biologist to analyze data hosted on our platform, and found that much of the job happens upstream of any analysis: building metadata models and intake standards, managing data from collection through curation and provenance, and developing data models to characterize experimental resources. These works turn unstructured biomedical data into structured ontology-aligned records others can find and reuse. However, it is largely invisible, and it took me time to learn it had a name, terminologies and a society. Many colleagues doing it still do not know and closing that gap is why I am running.
I would bring cross-program coordination with internal data operations teams and external contributors and data-lifecycle data curation experience at consortium scale from an organization supporting multiple data coordinating centers and open benchmarking challenges. My bioinformatics and tool evaluation background will help to make biocuration quality measurable. I also have experience in event organization, scientific communication and digital content development.
Within the ISB I want to see shared evaluation standards for AI-assisted curation, member-specific events, and stronger ties to data coordinating centers, clinical consortia, open-source communities (e.g. Nextflow, Bioconductor) and AI communities.

Executive Committee Election Results

The results for the 2025 EC elections are in!

We had five outstanding candidates:

  • TBK Reddy
  • Kalpana Panneerselvam
  • Susan Bello
  • Ranjana Kishore
  • Sumir Pandit

Out of 176 eligible voters, we had 80 ballots returned. The vote totals for each candidate were:

  • Susan Bello – 69 (31%)
  • Kalpana Panneerselvam – 53 (24%)
  • Ranjana Kishore – 46 (21%)
  • TBK Reddy – 38 (17%)
  • Sumir Pandit – 15 (7%)

The three candidates with the most votes all accepted the positions on the EC.

Thank you to all the candidates for agreeing to run. Thank you to all who voted. We look forward to a productive year.

Executive Committee 2024 Election Winners

As announced at the Annual General Meeting earlier this week, we would like to congratulate the following three individuals who have been elected by members of the International Society for Biocuration to serve on the society’s Executive Committee from 2024:

  1. M. Victoria Nugnes (University of Padua)
  2. Sonia Balyan (Indian Biological Data Centre)
  3. Peter Uetz (Virginia Commonwealth University)

We would also like to thank the election officer, Harry Caufield, and the nominating committee for making this election run smoothly:

  1. Sabrina Toro (Chair)
  2. Pascale Gaudet
  3. Silvio Tosatto
  4. Saurabh Raghuvanshi
  5. Raja Mazumder

More information on the Executive Committee can be found here.

Executive Committee Candidates – 2024

The election of three members of the International Society for Biocuration Executive Committee (ISB EC) will be held from September 25th – October 2nd, 2024.

Emails will be sent to current members on September 26th. Only current members, as of September 24th, 2024, who receive this email will be allowed to vote. Please note that if you are an ISB member and do not receive the email, please contact us at isb@biocurator.org.

We thank all of the following seven candidates for agreeing to stand for election to the Executive Committee (EC). Information about the candidates standing for election to the Executive Committee (EC) is available below:

Sonia Balyan

Position: Scientist

Affiliation: Indian Biological Data Centre, Regional Centre for Biotechnology, Faridabad, India

Biosketch: As a dedicated scientist specializing in plant molecular biology, biotechnology, and bioinformatics, my career is rooted in cutting-edge research and the crucial field of biocuration. With over 7 years of post-Ph.D. experience, I have developed deep expertise in managing and curating complex biological data, particularly in plant genomics and phenomics. My work is driven by a commitment to transforming raw data into accessible, well-annotated resources that are indispensable for advancing agricultural research and promoting environmental sustainability.

At the Indian Biological Data Centre (IBDC) in Faridabad, where I currently serve as a Scientist, I have played a pivotal role in pioneering initiatives that enhance the utility of big data. A cornerstone of my career has been the development of the Indian Crop Phenome Database, a unique resource designed to archive crop phenome data and ensure it adheres to FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). I am currently spearheading the Indian Functional Genomics DataBank (IFGDb) project, which aims to create a comprehensive repository for functional genomics data, as well as the Indian Research Data Archive (IRDA), a repository for the archival of diverse research data. Additionally, I lead the genomics module of the Multiomics Analysis Toolbox at IBDC, a groundbreaking platform that facilitates the analysis of multidimensional biological data to unravel the complexities of life sciences research. These initiatives not only advance biological sciences but also highlight the essential role of biocuration in ensuring that data-driven research is both meaningful and impactful.

My contributions have been recognized within the scientific community through several publications in good-impact journals, including training and outreach activities. My passion for science communication is further evident in my role as the host of the Beyond Shodh podcast, where I engage with leading Scientists/researchers to share their research, vision and journeys to a broader audience. Through my work in biocuration, I strive to bridge the gap between data and discovery, empowering researchers to unlock new insights that drive innovation in biological sciences and beyond.

Motivation: As a scientist at India’s first Biological Data Centre, I have been actively involved in structuring and archiving our nation’s invaluable biological data. This work has deepened my understanding of the essential role biocuration plays in not just preserving data, but in making it accessible and impactful for the global scientific community. My experience has fueled a strong commitment to upholding the highest standards of data integrity and usability—values I will bring to the ISB Executive Committee.

In 2024, I led the local organizing committee for the 17th Annual International Biocuration Conference in India, where I gained firsthand experience in fostering global collaboration and advancing biocuration practices. This role provided me with a comprehensive understanding of the field’s challenges and opportunities, equipping me to contribute effectively to ISB’s strategic initiatives.

As the host of Beyond Shodh, I have actively engaged with scientists across India, highlighting the journeys of pioneers in STEM. I also manage outreach for the Indian Biological Data Centre, focusing on engaging and motivating researchers about the importance of FAIR data and data stewardship. I am passionate about expanding ISB’s outreach efforts, ensuring biocuration’s significance is effectively communicated to emerging scientists and policymakers. My goal is to strengthen the global integration of diverse datasets, particularly from underrepresented regions, to build a more inclusive and comprehensive biocuration community.

Marija Milacic

Position: Scientific Associate/Biocurator

Affiliation: Computational Biology, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Biosketch: My training and wet lab experience involve an undergraduate degree in Molecular Biology and Physiology from the University of Belgrade, where I took part in human papillomavirus research, doctoral degree in Molecular and Medical Genetics from the University of Toronto, where I studied childhood cancer retinoblastoma, and postdoctoral training at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, where I studied genetics of autism spectrum disorders. My career in biocuration started in 2011, when I joined the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research and became part of the Reactome curation team. Becoming a biocurator enabled me to apply my skillset to building and maintaining a repository of biological pathways used by researchers globally. It also provided me with an insight into the importance of standardized representation of knowledge in biology and medical research, where open and continuous communication between researchers, publishers, and biocurators is key. I would like to continue my career in the field of biocuration because I believe that systematization and synthesis of knowledge is crucial for the ethical advancement of basic and applied biological sciences.

Motivation: As an ISB member for ten years now and a biocurator for more than thirteen years, I greatly appreciate the ISB’s efforts in bringing together biocurators from many different areas of biology, providing professional guidance, and improving the visibility of this profession. It would be an honor to contribute to the ISB as a member of its Executive Committee. As a biocurator of a peer-reviewed pathway database, I would bring to the Executive Committee experience in the areas of data visualization and community curation. The areas within the ISB that I would like to see developed are Training, Outreach, and Communication, and the IT Infrastructure.

Maria Victoria Nugnes

Position: Senior biocurator and trainer of the DisProt database (https://disprot.org/)

Affiliation: BioComputing UP Lab (https://protein.bio.unipd.it/) at University of Padua, Italy

Biosketch: I am a senior biocurator for DisProt (https://disprot.org/), database of manually curated intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) from literature, working both remotely from my country, Argentina, and in person at Silvio Tosatto’s lab at the University of Padova, in Italy. In this role, I curate and revise contributions from over 40 community curators spanning various countries from all over the world. I first joined DisProt as a curator in 2021 and have been focused on biocuration as my primary research interest since then. Over the course of the last two years, I assumed leadership responsibilities also for database thematic datasets and I have had the opportunity to manually curate over 1,200 publications. In addition to my curation duties, I design and deliver training materials and sessions for DisProt biocurators. My training sessions are conducted both remotely and in person, with recent sessions held in Argentina and Chile. My work is driven by a passion for enhancing our understanding of IDPs and supporting the global community of biocurators.

Motivation: My career in biocuration is dedicated to improving the quality and accessibility of biological data, particularly concerning intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs). I am from Argentina, where I work mainly remotely from, and I am deeply committed to helping people from lower-middle-income countries gain access to the tools, knowledge, and support needed to excel in biocuration.

If given the opportunity to serve on the ISB Executive Committee, I will bring:

Expertise in IDP Curation: My extensive experience with the DisProt database, best practices, ontologies and standards, that will help me to provide valuable insights into the curation processes.

Commitment to Education and Training: I am passionate about supporting and mentoring fellow curators. I have conducted numerous training sessions in English and in Spanish, both virtual and in-person, including a Spanish-language DisProt Biocuration course on the ELIXIR-SI eLearning platform. I aim to expand these educational initiatives to benefit curators worldwide.

Dedication to Collaboration and Community Building: My involvement in international projects, such as HUPO Proteomics Standards Initiative and Gene Ontology, have fostered strong collaborative skills and I am dedicated to building a supportive and connected biocuration community.

Within ISB, I would like to focus on the following areas:

  • Enhanced Training and Support: Develop comprehensive and accessible training programs, including multilingual options, to support curators from diverse backgrounds and regions in their career progression, especially those from lower-middle-income countries.
  • Standardization and Best Practices: Advocate for the adoption of standardized curation practices across databases, facilitating data integration and interoperability.
  • Community Engagement and Collaboration: Strengthen the global biocuration community by encouraging collaborative projects and networks, fostering a sense of common goal and mutual support among curators.

I am deeply honored to be this year’s recipient of the ISB Excellence in Biocuration Early Career Award 2024. This recognition increases even more my dedication to supporting and uplifting the global biocuration community. I am eager to contribute to the ISB Executive Committee, bringing enthusiasm, dedication, and a collaborative spirit to support and elevate our biocuration community even further.

Santhi Ramachandran

Position: Curator

Affiliation: GWAS Catalogue Curator, Cambridge, UK

Biosketch: I have been working in the field of biocuration since 2012, with a primary focus on variant curation. Over the years, I have gained extensive experience by working with prominent organizations and now at EMBL-EBI. My work has provided me with a strong foundation in biocuration practices, and I have also had the opportunity to engage with users of the curated data, gaining a deeper understanding of its practical applications in research and healthcare. This interaction has shaped my approach to curation, ensuring that the data we provide is accurate, reliable, and impactful for both scientific and societal advancement.

Motivation: I am motivated to run for a position on the ISB Executive Committee due to my decade-long experience in biocuration and my desire to contribute to the field’s growth. Over the past decade, I have worked with various organizations, including my current role at EMBL-EBI, where I have developed expertise in curating high-quality, impactful data. This experience has deepened my understanding of the complexities of biocuration and its vital role in supporting research and healthcare. I believe that the success of biocuration depends not only on data accuracy but also on how effectively this data is applied in real-world settings.

As a member of the ISB Executive Committee, I aim to contribute to the broader advancement of biocuration by leveraging my strong background in curation and my insights into the evolving needs of data users. I am particularly eager to promote stronger connections between curators and end-users, enhancing the practical impact of curated data. Additionally, I would advocate for expanding training programs and resources to support the next generation of biocurators, ensuring that ISB continues to lead the way in this critical field. Through these efforts, I hope to enhance the impact of biocuration within the scientific community.

Umasri Sankarlal

Position: Freelance Biocurator

Affiliation: Freelancer

Biosketch: My career started as a Biocurator participating in various projects involved in building comprehensive databases for Biomarker, Biological Pathway and Chemical compounds. Since 2004, my passion in biocuration has been growing, and volunteered myself wherever I got an opportunity. During my career break, I worked as freelance ontology mentor to developers, shared ideas on developing an ontology for online databases and supporting with necessary datasets for their project. I worked as short time Consulting Analyst with Thomson Reuters, Chennai on their Drug Forecasting database. Even though working a full-time employee in IT firm, I volunteer to be a member of ClinGen Intellectual Disability and Autism Gene curation working group panel and publishing the curated genes after my office hours.

Motivation: I nominate for a position in Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee. In my 20 years of work experience as a Biocurator, Patent analyst, IT Operation Analyst, Autosys Specialist and currently as Software Quality Analyst acquired technical skills with the help of diverse expertise team I worked with in various companies. I have always been treated equally without any gender bias and got motivated at my work place. The team have included people from various cultures and countries, and always supported in sharing their expertise knowledge to improve my career. Now it is my turn to return their kindness to others who need encouragement and support. Apart from doing at my current workplace, the role as a member of EDI committee in ISB will be more meaningful and have impact in Biocuration field.

Peter Uetz

Position: Associate Professor

Affiliation: Center for Biological Data Science, School of Life Sciences, Richmond, VA, USA

Biosketch: I have started the Reptile Database in 1996 when I was a graduate student at EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany. Since then, the database has become one of the most comprehensive biodiversity databases worldwide (being one of 160 databases in the Catalogue of Life consortium). I have also founded the Microbial Protein Interaction database, now a part of IntAct. After being an investigator at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) and the Venter Institute (JCVI) for about 5 years I was hired as associate professor at VCU in Richmond, Va, in 2011. I am teaching courses in functional genomics and bioinformatics there, training students in biodiversity data-related curation and processing. The database and various papers about it have been cited 4000-5000 times.

Motivation: Biocuration is an undervalued part of biomedical sciences and I feel strongly that its role needs to be better promoted and students trained in this field. While all biomedical scientists are using various databases, they rarely appreciate the huge amount of work required to establish and maintain these data sources. My long career experience in database curation and promotion will help the ISB to promote and advance the field, although I am currently focusing on biodiversity data, an area that has been underrepresented at ISB, hence one of my goals is to strengthen the links to biodiversity and other biological sub-disciplines that are not well covered by ISB.

Huajin Wang

Position: Senior Librarian

Affiliation: Carnegie Mellon University

Biosketch: I am a Cell Biologist turned information professional and open science advocate. As a Senior Librarian at Carnegie Mellon University Libraries, I provide consultation and develop programs that help research communities make their research data and outputs more open, reproducible, and reusable, foster collaboration across disciplinary boundaries, and engage stakeholders to build a healthy data ecosystem. I have been in consulting roles for data curation and management on many research projects. As a life sciences researcher, I have collaborated with biologists, clinicians, and data scientists on many successful research projects in areas spanning membrane trafficking, lipid metabolism, bioinformatics, and management and analysis of multimodal datasets. I completed my PhD in Cell Biology at University of Alberta, postdoctoral research at Yale/Harvard, and independent research at Carnegie Mellon University. I was a co-founder and Director of the Open Science & Data Collaborations Program at CMU. I served a senior leadership role at the Center for Open Science to drive culture change in research communities with technology, community building, services, and thought leadership. I am a member of the Data Curation Network, FORCE11, and other organizations that contribute to the scholarly data ecosystem. I am also on the Advisory Committee of the UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN).

Affiliation: The biggest asset that makes me an excellent fit for the Executive Committee is my rich and multifaceted experience with data in the many roles I play – a scientist, a data steward, a community builder, and a strategic leader. During my career as a scientist, I worked with large varieties of research data and data formats, and deeply appreciated the value of well curated, open datasets. When I move into a librarian and open science role, it has been my mission to help researchers make data more open and reusable so that the results are more reproducible. I co-founded the Open Science & Data Collaborations program at CMU, and served as the Director of Program at the Center for Open Science (the nonprofit running OSF). In these roles, I helped researchers and communities navigate data sharing, stewardship and curation. I oversaw the strategy and execution of training and consulting services, launched community engagement and outreach initiatives, and supported communities and stakeholders to adopt data sharing infrastructure and best practices. The communities I worked with span a wide range of life sciences fields including neuroscience, cancer biology, genomics, and virology, with an emphasis on early career researchers and under represented groups.

New ISB Executive Committee (2017-2018)

The election of the 2017 – 2018 ISB Executive Committee (EC) took place last October. Please join us again in giving a warm welcome to Nicole Vasilevsky and Rama Balakrishnan to the Executive Committee, and congratulating Sylvain Poux for his reelection.

Cecilia Arighi has been elected as the new Chair of ISB, Nicole Vasilevsky is the new Secretary, and Sandra Orchard continues serving as Treasurer for the 2017-2018 period. The Executive Committee is also composed by Suzanna Lewis, Peter McQuilton, Andrew Su, and Zhang Zhang. As always, please reach out to any of us on the ISB EC as your representatives. The official handover date for the new EC took place November 1st.

After many years of service to the Biocuration community as members of the ISB Executive Committee, we bid farewell to Melissa Haendel and Monica Munoz-Torres. We are thankful for their invaluable contributions to the improvement of the International Society for Biocuration.

We again would like to thank all the candidates for their time and effort in running for election, and of course, all the ISB members who voted. Your participation in the society’s activities is greatly appreciated. We would like to also thank this year’s volunteers which oversaw the electoral process:

  • 2017 Nominating Committee: Pascale Gaudet, Stanley Laulederkind,  Raja Mazumder, Elvira Mitraka, and Randi Vita.
  • Elections Officer: Mary Ann Tuli
  • Membership Officer: Lorna Richardson

Results of 2017 Elections of ISB Executive Committee

The results of the 2017 Elections of the
ISB Executive Committee are in!

Congratulations to 
Dr. Rama Balakrishnan, Dr. Nicole Vasilevsky,
and Dr. Sylvain Poux!

 

We express our sincere gratitude to all ISB members who participated in this year’s electoral process with your vote. One hundred and four out of 226 eligible ISB members voted in this year’s election; a breakdown of the votes we captured is attached.

Your votes have elected Rama and Nicole as new members, and re-elected Sylvain for a second term in the Executive Committee. Rama and Nicole will fill two open positions when the terms of Monica Munoz-Torres and Melissa Haendel come to completion on 31-October-2017.

Please join us in thanking Moni and Melissa for all their work over the past years! 

We would like to also express our sincere gratitude to the rest of the nominated candidates who considered volunteering their time as part of the ISB-EC this year:

Dr. Sirarat Sarntivijai, Dr. Taner Z Sen, and
Dr. Christopher Southan.

We are also very grateful with the following ISB members who volunteered their time for a successful execution of the 2017 EC election:

  • 2017 Nominating Committee: Pascale Gaudet, Stanley Laulederkind,  Raja Mazumder, Elvira Mitraka, and Randi Vita.
  • Elections Officer: Mary Ann Tuli
  • Membership Officer: Lorna Richardson

Thank you again for participating in the 2017 ISB Electoral Process!

Sincerely,
Your Colleagues at the ISB Executive Committee. 

Results of 2016 Elections of ISB Executive Committee

The results of the 2016 Elections of the
ISB Executive Committee are in!

Congratulations to
Dr. Peter McQuilton and Dr. Andrew Su!

 

We express our sincere gratitude to all ISB members who participated in this year’s electoral process with your vote. One hundred and thirty four out of 269 eligible ISB members voted in this year’s election.

Your vote has elected Peter and Andrew to take the two EC positions that will be open when the terms of Claire O’Donovan and Mike Cherry come to completion on 31-October-2016.

Please join us in thanking Claire and Mike for all their work over the past six years!

We would like to also express our sincere gratitude to the rest of the nominated candidates who considered volunteering their time as part of the ISB-EC this year:

Nicole Vasilevsky, Chris Hunter, Lynn Schriml, Peter Uetz, and Jasmine Young.

We are also very grateful with these ISB members who volunteered their time for a successful execution of the 2016 EC election:

  • 2016 Nominating Committee: Kimberly Van Auken, Frederic Bastian, Doug Howe, Ruth Lovering, and Jingchu Luo.
  • Elections Officer: Mary Ann Tuli
  • Membership Officer: Lorna Richardson

Thank you again for participating in the 2016 ISB Electoral Process!

Your colleagues at the ISB Executive Committee.