Seeds to Systems Research
Research is fundamental to OLS. Under the “Seeds to Systems” strategic phase, research led by our team will ensure that OLS’s training and operations are rooted in evidence and best practices.
Research conducted under this theme will directly inform and shape our other missions, ensuring they address the real-world skills and resources needed to lead and manage sustainable projects.
This research is funded by CZI Open Science (2024-2026).
Leverage points for community and project sustainability
This research will combine open science with methodologies drawn from sustainability research to explore and understand the needs, opportunities, and challenges faced by researchers, and identify key learning modules, the “leverage points”, for designing the Seeds to Systems curriculum.
Research Funding Ecosystem and Sustainability Landscape
This research will combine interdisciplinary approaches to map, organise and document resources that will be combined to both improve our Seeds to Systems curriculum, and offer standalone references for research funding and sustainability.
Researchers
Role in OLS:
NASA Cohort Coordinator (contract)
I work as data manager at CONABIO where I develop FAIR workflows for biodiversity and agricultural data. I also study a PhD at UNAM, and my research is focused on the challenges for integrating social and ecological data. I love working in interdisciplinary projects that combine my interests in sustainability, data and open research
Riva is a Linguist that uses computational techniques to explore how language use changes. She is an editor at Programming Historian, a Software Sustainability Institute Fellow, and a member of the RLadies Global Leadership Team.
Role in OLS:
Associate Director, Finance and Operations
Patricia is a Co-Executive Director of OLS. Before joining OLS she worked at Centre at the University of Edinburgh, University of Birmingham and CERN’s Scientific Information Service working closely with software developers to deliver data and code sharing solutions. She loves collaborating openly and making projects welcoming to new comers.
Role in OLS:
Executive Director, Business and Development Lead
Yo is the executive director and a co-founder of OLS. As an EngD student at the University of Manchester, Yo is studying pathogen-related data sharing and sustainability of open source software.Yo is a founder of Code is Science, and previously, they were editor for the PLOS Open Source Toolkit, editor emeritus at the Journal of Open Source Software, board member of the Open Bioinformatics Foundation, and a software developer at the University of Cambridge, working on an open source biological data warehouse called InterMine.
Role in OLS:
Director of Partnerships and Strategy
Malvika Sharan is a Senior Researcher at The Alan Turing Institute, where she leads a team of community managers and co-leads The Turing Way, a community-led handbook on data science. She is a co-founder of Open Life Science, and an active contributor of several open source/science projects. Connect with her on topics such as community building, open science, strategic collaboration and representation of marginalised members in leadership.