The Research Data Alliance: Building Community & Infrastructure for Data Sharing World-wide

This presentation to Pitt and CMU library faculty & staff on data sharing and the Research Data Alliance was given during Open Access Week 2015, jointly sponsored by the Carnegie Mellon University Libraries and the University Library System, University of Pittsburgh on Thursday, October 22, 11:00am - 12:00pm at the Mellon Institute Conference Room (MI 348), Carnegie Mellon University. Three years ago, the Research Data Alliance (rd-alliance.org) was launched as a community-driven international organization with a mission to develop social and technical infrastructure that supports and accelerates data sharing world-wide. Since its launch, the RDA has grown precipitously and now has over 3100 members from 100+ countries. U.S. Chair Francine Berman discusses the opportunities and challenges of sharing research data, and describes RDA’s global efforts to build an agile and functional organization, a broad and cohesive community, and a pipeline of impact-focused infrastructure adopted by individuals, projects and organizations to solve problems. ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Francine Berman is the Edward P. Hamilton Distinguished Professor in Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She is a Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). 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.” Dr. Berman is U.S. lead of the Research Data Alliance (RDA). She also serves as Chair of the Anita Borg Institute Board of Trustees, as co-Chair of the NSF Advisory Committee for the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate, as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Sloan Foundation, and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI). Dr. Berman has served as Director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center and as Vice President for Research at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She also served as co-Chair of the National Academies Board on Research Data and Information (BRDI), as co-Chair of the US-UK Blue Ribbon Task Force for Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access, and Chair of the Information, Computing and Communication Section (Section T) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). For her accomplishments, leadership, and vision, Dr. Berman was recognized by the Library of Congress as a “Digital Preservation Pioneer”, as one of the top women in technology by BusinessWeek and Newsweek, and as one of the top technologists by IEEE Spectrum