Amy Buckland (co-chair)
University Librarian
Concordia University
Prior to joining Concordia University, she held the position of assistant deputy minister for collections at Library and Archives Canada. Ms Buckland has built digital research services, with a focus on open access, at the University of Guelph, University of Chicago, and McGill University.
David Castle (co-chair)
Professor in the School of Public Administration and the Gustavson School of Business
University of Victoria
Researcher in Residence
Office of the Chief Science Advisor of Canada
Since 2019 he has been a member of the Scientific Committee of the ISC’s World Data System and has recently joined the Canadian National Committee for the Committee on Data of the International Science Council. As a member of the OECD Global Science Forum Expert Group, he contributed to the 2020 report, Building Digital Workforce Capacity and Skills for Data Intensive Science and has recently joined another expert group focused on mobilizing science in times of crises.
Mark Daley
Chief AI Officer and Professor
Western University
Mark is the Chief AI Officer at Western University and a full professor in the Department of Computer Science with cross-appointments in five other departments, The Rotman Institute of Philosophy, and The Western Institute for Neuroscience. He is also a faculty affiliate of Toronto's Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
Mark has previously served as the Vice-President (Research) at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research(CIFAR), and Chief Digital Information Officer, Special Advisor to the President, and Associate Vice-President (Research) at Western.
Mark is the past chair of Compute Ontario and serves on a number of other boards.
Monica Granados
Assistant Director, Open Climate
Creative Commons
Dr. Monica Granados is an Assistant Director at Creative Commons working on the Open Climate Campaign promoting open access of climate and biodiversity research. She received her MSc from the University of Toronto and her PhD McGill University and has published several papers on open access and data. She is also the co-founder of PREreview, an organization dedicated to bringing equity to peer review. Prior to her work at Creative Commons, Monica was a Senior Policy Advisor at Environment and Climate Change Canada where she led the development of their Open Science Action Plan. Monica is also an alumna of the Frictionless Fellows Program and the Mozilla Open Leaders Program.
Natalie Harrower
Executive Director
Canadian Research Data Centre Network
Dr. Harrower is the Executive Director of the Canadian Research Data Centre Network (CRDCN), a national infrastructure for research in the social sciences and population health, and one of Canada’s 19 Major Science Initiatives. She currently serves on the Canadian National Committee for CODATA, CFI’s Research Data Working Group, and the High Level Advisory Committee for FAIR Impact project.
Formerly the Executive Director of the Digital Repository of Ireland, a national social science and humanities research data infrastructure that also houses Ireland’s National Open Reseach Forum, Natalie is known for leading FAIR practices in Europe. She is a long standing contributor to the Research Data Alliance (RDA) and has served on a range of bodies dedicated to developing FAIR policies and practices, including the European Commission’s High Level Advisory group on FAIR data that wrote the action plan for FAIR in Europe, the EOSC FAIR working group, ALLEA’s Open Science Taskforce, the OECD’s HLAG on Business models for sustainable research data repositories, and Ireland’s National Archives Advisory Council.
Kevin Kasa
Graduate researcher (MASc)
University of Guelph and Vector Institute
Mr. Kasa is a member of the Chief Science Advisor’s Youth Council. He is a graduate researcher (MASc) at the University of Guelph and Vector Institute, where he is working on developing uncertainty measures for artificial intelligence (AI) systems to ensure their safe deployment in safety-critical applications.
Mark Leggott
Director, National and International Relations
Digital Research Alliance of Canada
Former Executive Director of Research Data Canada through which five national data summits were run. Oversees international portfolio at DRAC. Long time leader in Research Data Alliance, CODATA, chairs the international Open Science Executive Roundtable.
Kim McGrail
Professor in the School of Population and Public Health and Centre for Health Services and Policy Research
University of British Columbia
Scientific Director
Population Data BC and Health Data Research Network Canada
Her research interests are quantitative policy evaluation and all aspects of population data science. She was part of the Expert Advisory Group for the pan-Canadian Health Data Strategy and is currently a member of the Global Partnership for AI as part of the Data Governance Working Group.
Benoit Pirenne
Director, user engagement
Ocean Networks Canada
He joined the University of Victoria in October 2004 to build the Data Management and Archiving System for the NEPTUNE Canada and VENUS observatories. Previously, Benoît spent 18 years at the European Southern Observatory (ESO, Munich, Germany), a leading Organization for astronomical research. At ESO Benoît assumed a number of scientific and technical positions. As Head of the Operations Technical Support Department in this Organization, he was responsible for running the data management and archiving system supporting both ESO's telescopes and the NASA/ESA's Hubble Space Telescope.
Benoît earned a B.CSc. from Liège, Belgium, and a M.CSc. from the University of Namur, Belgium.
Eric Rancourt
Assistant Chief Statistician, Strategic Data Management, Methods and Analysis and Chief Data Officer
Statistics Canada
He has worked at Statistics Canada for 33 years and has occupied several roles. His main areas of work have been on the treatment of non-response, estimation, and the use of administrative and alternative data in statistical programs. Recently, he has worked on frameworks for optimizing privacy and information, data ethics, and modern statistical designs.
He holds a BSc in Statistics from University Laval, BAs in Arts (Ancient Studies; Medieval and Renaissance Studies), as well as a BA in philosophy from the University of Ottawa focusing on data ethics. He is Chair of the Board for the Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute (CANSSI). He has been involved in many professional associations, including the International Association of Survey Statisticians (IASS) for which he is Vice-President, and the International Association for Official Statistics (IAOS), and is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute (ISI). He is Chair-Elect for the Survey Research Methods Section of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and he is also a member of the Statistical Society of Canada (SSC).
Sujeevan Ratnasingham
Director, Informatics
Centre for biodiversity genomics
Sujeevan Ratnasingham is a bioinformatician with a significant experience in the field of biodiversity genomics. As the Director of Informatics at the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics, he leads innovative projects that apply machine learning and high-performance computing methods to perform biodiversity data gathering and analysis. He is the chief architect of BOLD and mBRAVE, critical platforms in biodiversity data management, and the BIN framework, a system for algorithmic species definition and registration. His work primarily aims at using computational and DNA sequencing technologies to monitor biospheric changes as tool for impact assessment and management. Additionally, he serves as an Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Guelph.
Kathleen Shearer
Executive Director
Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR)
Ms. Shearer is the Executive Director of COAR (Confederation of Open Access Repositories), an international association that brings together individual repositories and repository networks in order to build capacity, align policies and practices, and act as a global voice for the repository community. She is also a research associate with the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) and has worked in the areas of open access, repositories and research data management for over 20 years.
Reda Tafirout
Senior Research Scientist and Department Head for Scientific Computing
TRIUMF
Dr. Tafirout field of research is particle physics which has a primary objective of addressing the most compelling science questions of our time about what are the fundamental constituents of matter and the forces that govern our universe. By colliding particles at the highest energy achievable in the laboratory, one effectively recreates conditions just a fraction of a second after the Big Bang, thus subatomic particles may be created that have never been seen before.
Dr. Tafirout has made substantial contributions to several high profile international particle physics experiments with OPAL, SNO, CDF, and ATLAS in varying roles and capacities; including detector commissioning and operations, online/offline software and computing, as well as direct analysis and interpretation of the data with subsequent publications. The research programs have made precise measurements and breakthrough discoveries leading to two Nobel Prizes: one in 2013 for the Higgs boson discovery by the ATLAS and CMS experiments (awarded to theorists François Englert and Peter Higgs who predicted the fundamental particle in 1964); the other Nobel Prize was awarded in 2015 to Takaaki Kajita (from the Super-Kamiokande experiment) and Arthur. B. McDonald (from the SNO experiment) for the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass. Dr. Tafirout is a Laureate of the 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics awarded to the SNO collaboration.
Dr. Tafirout has extensive experience in scientific computing and since 2007 he is the Director of Operations of the Canadian ATLAS Tier-1 centre which is part of a globally distributed computing and storage network set up to store, process and analyze vast amount of data.
Bo Wandschneider
Chief Information Officer
University of Toronto
As the CIO of the University of Toronto, he successfully led his team through the pandemic-induced shift to remote work and learning. Previously, he served as the CIO of Queen’s University and Deputy CIO at the University of Guelph, where he initiated and implemented many innovative projects in finance, HR, teaching and learning, data management, and information security. He has also fostered collaboration across regional, provincial, and national levels, contributing to the advancement of the higher education ecosystem.
He currently chairs the Digital Repositories Expert Group at the Digital Research Alliance of Canada, and is a founding member of CanSSOC - the Canadian Shared Security Operations Centre at CANARIE.
Peter Wilenius
Vice-President, Cybersecurity Programs
CANARIE
Peter Wilenius was appointed CANARIE’s Vice President, Cybersecurity Programs and Services in 2022, after serving eight years as Vice President, Business Development. In his current role, Peter is focused on advancing the overall cybersecurity capabilities of Canada’s research and education sector by evolving existing cybersecurity services and the research and development of new services. During his tenure at CANARIE, Peter led the development of the Cybersecurity Initiatives Program, evolved the Digital Accelerator for Innovation and Research (DAIR) Cloud Program, and created and evolved relationships with partners in the private and not-for-profit sectors.