Jamie Wittenberg is the Assistant Dean for Research and Innovation Strategies at the University of Colorado Boulder Libraries. Her portfolio includes acquisitions, digitization, discovery, cataloging, collection management, interlibrary loan, IT, metadata, preservation. Wittenberg’s professional interests include community-developed open source software, research information management, digital preservation, and data curation. Her research includes work on automating open access policy implementation, publishing digital 3D objects, and building infrastructure to support sharing and preservation research data.

Irina Sens is the Deputy Director and head of Library Services at TIB – the German National Library of Science and Technology. She led the German project “Registration of Scientific primary data” which was responsible for the introduction of DOIs for research data. She is strongly involved in the German National Research Data Initiative (NFDI).

Marco Marsella is Senior Advisor Global Information System at FAO, where he contributes to the design of the system and the promotion of DOIs in the Plant Genetic Resources community.

Dedicated to public service and knowledge access, John has experience working in research and public library contexts in Canada. He graduated from McGill University with a PhD in Neuroscience in 2021, where he worked on several projects about media discourse and neurodevelopmental disabilities. He is currently the Manager of the Canadian Persistent Identifier (PID) Community at the Canadian Research Knowledge Network, supporting the use of PIDs like ORCID iDs and DOIs across the country.

Paola coordinates the Open Access Committee and Management Unit at the National University of Rosario (UNR), Argentina. She is responsible for the Academic Data Repository (RDA-UNR), the Institutional Repository (RepHipUNR), and the UNR Journals Portal. She researches and teaches on scholarly communication and open science. A member of the Expert Committee of Argentina’s National System of Digital Repositories, which she previously coordinated (2009–2011), she has contributed to national legislation and led consulting projects in Argentina and Uruguay, and supports capacity building and regional initiatives including LA Referencia.

Mohamed Ba-Essa is Manager of Preservation and Digital Services at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), where he is responsible for Research Repository and Research Data Services, University Records Management and Archive, and Library Systems and Digital services.

Mark Hahnel is the founder of Figshare , a repository where users can make all of their research outputs citable, shareable and discoverable. He has a PhD in stem cell biology at Imperial College London.

Owen Iyoha is the CEO of the Eko-Konnect Research and Education Initiative. He oversees infrastructure development, capacity building, and advocacy to develop the research and education network in Nigeria. Owen also advocates for Open Science, Open Access, and other open paradigms and infrastructure necessary to support scholarly and research outputs. Eko-Konnect currently serves as the consortium lead for DataCite and ORCID in Nigeria.

Rachael is Associate University Librarian for Digital Strategy and Services at the University of Chicago Library, where her current portfolio encompasses Library systems and IT, repositories, discovery, digital scholarship and digitization. She has spent more than 15 years in National and Academic Libraries, always with a focus on infrastructure for open scholarship, and as an active participant in community initiatives on national and international infrastructures for identifiers in research. Other areas of interest are collections as data, accessibility, and digital literacy.

Madison is a science data manager at the U.S. Geological Survey. She develops tools and workflows to make the data publication process more efficient and FAIR for USGS researchers and data managers. She also promotes data management best practices through her leadership of various communities of practice (CoP), including the USGS’s Community for Data Integration Data Management Working Group and Metadata Reviewers CoP.

Salvatore Mele is a Senior Advisor for International Relations at CERN where he facilitates links with governments, funding agencies, research organizations and universities. He also helps create opportunities to widen access to CERN for early-career researchers in specific low and medium-income countries. He contributed to Open Science as CERN Head of Open Access, architecting the SCOAP3 initiative and led teams running digital libraries and designing Open Data solutions. He is proud to be one of the founding directors of ORCID. Salvatore holds a PhD in Particle Physics, and previously enjoyed a 15 year career as an experimental physicist at CERN.

Ritsuko Nakajima is Director of the Planning and Management Office at the Asia and Pacific Research Center, Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST). She previously led JST’s information services, including a journal aggregator, DOI registration, data repositories, and a researcher directory. She has promoted open access to outputs from JST-funded projects. Since April 2025, she has managed the Center, advancing collaboration and innovation in the Asia-Pacific region while promoting the use of research information infrastructure and Open Science.

Natasha Simons is Director, National Coordination, for the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC). She leads a large, talented team of Program Managers and Subject Matter Experts contributing to deliver ARDC’s strategic Research Data Commons initiatives. Based at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Natasha is passionate about bringing out the best in people and creating high performing teams. She has a high international profile in the area of research data infrastructure and enjoys collaborating to solve common data challenges, particularly through the global Research Data Alliance. Natasha holds a number of positions on international Boards and is co-chair of the DataCite Community Engagement Steering Group and the APAC Expert Group.

Joel is an Open Science specialist with 30 years of experience developing knowledge management solutions for academic and research institutions. Throughout his career, he has led over 620 projects in data management, digital publishing, repositories, citizen science, and educational platforms. He coordinates dPyx and OpenDots, two open, free software initiatives that support hundreds of institutions across Latin America in project evaluation, training, and certification in open access, open technologies, and scholarly communication.