Supplementary Data 9: Impact on Mentor Case Study - Perspective from Mentor in Early-/Mid-Career Stage

Since 2020, Dr. Mallory Freeberg (EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute, UK) has also been a mentor in four Open Seeds programs (OLS-2, OLS-3, OLS-6, OLS-8) supporting mentees who led their projects in Turkey, Nigeria, and across Europe. Because of her expertise in bioinformatics and human genomics, Dr. Freeberg was well-matched with Open Seeds mentees leading open projects developing metagenomic analysis workflows in Galaxy, establishing community consensus for sleep data standards, leading stakeholder engagement activities with polar science researchers and indigenous communities, and building a health data sharing application.

Engaging with mentees from various backgrounds was also an opportunity for Dr. Freeberg to expand her professional network, while exchanging ideas with other cohort members on effectively communicating complex ideas. As someone transitioning from an early-career to mid-career stage, Dr. Freeberg benefitted from the mentorship experiences and training offered by the Open Seeds program, honing valuable skills that proved to be important for people management responsibilities in her day job. Dr. Freeberg recently joined the Bioinfo4Women International Mentoring program for Young Scientists (https://bioinfo4women.bsc.es/) as a mentor, now expertly equipped to apply these mentorship skills in a new community and continue fostering open practices in bioinformatics.

Dr Freeberg continues to find inspiration within the OLS community, sharing community members’ collective knowledge about open science with collaborators and colleagues.