The self-nomination period for our Board of Directors is over and we are excited to share this year’s candidates! We hope to begin the community seat election sometime next week, followed by a board ratification of this vote and election of two additional seats.
Benjamin Carr
Links
https://twitter.com/BenjaminHCCarr
https://github.com/BenjaminHCCarr/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bencarr/
I have been involved with and contributing to open source software, and like-minded communities for over 20 years now. I, like others, in OH am a firm believer in open science, open data, and open access. I was an early enrollee in Harvard-PGP, excited by the promise of enabling precision medicine and an open dataset for researchers to use. I hold a Ph.D. in biology from Boston University and have worked professionally in academic, NGO, government, and private industry.
My expertise bridges multiple areas of science having worked in oceanography, satellite remote sensing, AUVs, marine biology, and bioinformatics, as well as being involved with the 9/11 impact assessment of the Hudson River. I have also been running the OH Facebook account for the last two years. In 2018 I was lucky enough to have a hand in facilitating and doing QA/QC on a portion of the NIH Data Commons Pilot Phase Consortium, and have high hopes that at least one fully open source stack emerges from that endeavor.
Vero Estrada-Galiñanes
Links
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/veronicaestrada/
MyPage: https://sites.google.com/view/veroeg
Twitter: https://twitter.com/GalinanesVero
DSS workshop paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.01974
I am passionate about trustworthy storage systems and digital archives. I am an active member of Open Humans. My interest is mainly focused on: 1) new storage solutions for OH data and 2) better data visualisations of life-logging data collections. I am also co-author of the Open Humans open collaboration article.
My vision about an open health archive was presented during the Data-Driven Self-Regulating Systems (DSS) Workshop in 2018. The main concept is to preserve the health-related data generated throughout the life of an individual without giving away data ownership while promoting open data and data sharing. I keep working on these ideas.
My recent experience comes from postdoc roles (storage systems / distributed systems). I am a former postdoc at the Quality of Life Technologies (DIKU). Prior to academic jobs, I had leadership roles in the industry and government. I have experience in making sense of large databases. I collaborate with the SciEd Network (Lectures without borders).
Beau Gunderson
Links
Homepage: https://beaugunderson.com
GitHub: https://github.com/beaugunderson
I am a previous employee of Open Humans (2014-2016). Prior to 2014 I worked at Practice Fusion on the Data Science team, and from 2016 to the present I’ve worked at Canvas Medical building electronic health record software for primary care practices. My recent work at Canvas has focused on security and privacy (I am now the security and privacy officer in addition to my engineering duties).
Since leaving Open Humans as an employee I have been an active user of the project. I’ve also maintained a presence on the OH Slack and GitHub as well as offering my review of projects on the Project Review forum.
I believe I would be most useful in the realms of security and privacy and software development guidance.
Nathaniel Pearson
Links
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GenomeNathan
Blog: http://genomena.com/
Slides about various projects: https://www.slideshare.net/NathanielPearson
Talks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZX0culYjU_A (whole-genome talk) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxkL-KtUaJY (HLA talk)
Exploring what inner data say, about our health and history, has long driven my work. And teaming with fellow geeks, caregivers, and layfolk has made that a joy. The chance now, to help guide how we Open Humans bring our big ideas to life, as an anchor cohort for the biodata-informed future, would fulfillingly continue that effort. To that aim, I bring strong grounding in genomics, a passion to learn new stuff (hello microbiomes!…), and team spirit.
Background-wise, I trained in evolutionary genomics at Stanford and U. Chicago, led collaborative science at ships both small (Knome) and big (New York Genome Center), and teach genetic counseling students as guest faculty at Sarah Lawrence. To help folks pool personal biodata to drive crowd discovery, I launched the Empowered Genome Community in 2012 and recently founded the free, good cause-allied personal immunogenomics company, Root, to honor tissue donor volunteers with well grounded insights from their own match-screened genes.
Marja Pirttivaara
Links
Linked In: https://fi.linkedin.com/in/pirttivaaramarja
Twitter: https://twitter.com/marja_p?lang=en
Blog: http://www.dnaguru.fi/
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/FinlandDNA/
I’m a Finnish PhD (physics) and MBA (social and healthcare management), working at the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra and also an unpaid visiting researcher of the University of Helsinki (DNA related issues). I’m a genetic genealogy expert, admin of Finland DNA project with more than 15 000 members, admin of Finland DNA Facebook group, with 7 700 members. I’m also a founding member of MyData Global. I’m a practical and knowledgeable bridge builder, always curious about the future. I’m just waiting for my whole genome results.
My vision of Open Humans is a trusted global platform and actively cooperating community for fair & responsible sharing and utilizing personal data, mydata, tools and creating best practises.
As a Finn and European and a genetic genealogy & genome data expert (etc) I’d like to contribute to the Open Humans humans community.
Gary Wolf
Links
http://quantifiedself.com
By vocation I’m a journalist but since 2008 I’ve been focused on supporting the Quantified Self community as Director of Quantified Self Labs, a California based social enterprise whose mission is to help people learn from their own data. We’ve been allies and active collaborators with OH. Our most recent collaboration involves using OH to support a participant led research project (PLR) focused on self-tracking of ovulatory cycles. I’m aligned with the Open Humans mission to both support individual agency in using our own personal data to answer our own questions; and, in supporting the formation of new collectivities for shared knowledge making. I’m also closely aligned with the OH approach and cultural roots in the open source community. I look forward to helping.
Alexander (Sasha) Wait Zaranek
Links
Twitter: https://twitter.com/wait_sasha
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Ifj9cY0AAAAJ&hl=en
Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0415-9655
I am head of quantified biology at Veritas Genetics, the first company to introduce whole genome sequencing and interpretation to consumers and their physicians for under $1,000. My current research is focused on the delivery of real-time, biomedical insights from massive data sets, spanning millions of individuals across collaborating organizations, eventually encompassing exabytes of data. I am also a co-founder of the Harvard Personal Genome Project.
My hope is that Open Humans becomes a central, global hub for participatory research and participant led data sharing much as Wikipedia has become a hub for sharing facts. Specifically, I will use my relationships with the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH), NIH common fund, , the NIST “Genome In a Bottle” reference material consortium, and the global Personal Genome Project (PGP) organizations to further the integration of Open Humans with other local, national and international biomedical data sharing efforts.
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