Associate Directors of the Australian BioCommons

Dr Rhys Francis, Strategy and Partnerships

The Australian BioCommons is all about people using digital data as an ingredient in creating new knowledge. Delivering on that perspective involves the strategic use of e-infrastructures and capabilities and the promotion of new e-capabilities. Rhys brings a wealth of experience in those topics including authoring the NCRIS eResearch plan and working within government and the sector to propose and initiate much of Australia’s eResearch landscape all of which continues today. His interests over that time have steadily turned towards data as an ingredient in knowledge generation. He aims to make Australian BioCommons a flagship example of harnessing digital infrastructure for data driven knowledge creation.

Dr Jeff Christiansen, Engagements and Operations
How can the BioCommons deploy useful informatics solutions for many thousands of life scientists across the country that are fit for purpose and address a need? We believe through an inclusive culture of community engagement - where researchers are asked in the first place what their current challenges are, and where we listen carefully and distil this information down to identify useful approaches or solutions that can be deployed to address these community-scale challenges. We're also very keen that the community is fully included through all the stages of the journey. 

Jeff leads the Engagement Team and brings an expert biological knowledge from a molecular biology research background and over 20 years of hands-on experience distilling researcher's challenges and then building fit for purpose and easy to use data-centric solutions for various communities of life science researchers. Digital technologies are proving transformational for the life sciences across the globe, and it's Jeff's aim to make sure that Australian researchers can participate fully in this global digital ecosystem as first class citizens through making sure the BioCommons coordinates deployment of things the community needs. It's a mammoth task, but if we can build solutions to address different communities needs and make sure these all work together seamlessly across Australia and internationally, we'll go a long way to achieving this goal.

Dr Steven Manos, Cyberinfrastructure

The mission to deliver transformational digital capabilities to Australian life scientists can only be realised though successful partnership with national digital infrastructure capabilities including NCI, Pawsey, ARDC, AARNet, AAF and others. An ambitious strategy using a cyberinfrastructure approach will drive the implementation through close collaborations with national and international stakeholders. 

Steven brings 15 years of experience working at the intersection of research practice and digital technologies. He brings a mix of skills in facilitation, strategy and tech, and has a big focus on partnerships and community building. His work will deliver a more united national workforce of research support specialists providing valuable expertise and new services to the life sciences community. 

Dr Nigel Ward, Platforms

BioCommons plans to deliver an ecosystem of platforms that provide researchers with sophisticated analysis and digital asset stewardship capabilities. The shape of these platforms will be defined through working closely with partner organisations during their establishment, operation, and interoperation.

Nigel brings many years of experience in applied IT research, software engineering, interoperability of distributed systems, web technologies, service and data standardisation to assist the teams establishing online software platforms, including overseeing the deployment of software platforms such as EcoCloud, Biodiversity and Climate Change Virtual Laboratory, Characterisation Virtual Laboratory, Humanities & Social Science Virtual Laboratory and Galaxy Australia.

BioCommons has a range of platforms with differing levels of maturity, from the well-established Galaxy Australia service running thousands of jobs per month, to the nascent command-line interface program that we are prototyping now. By engendering a "growth mindset" in the teams developing and operating these platforms Nigel will ensure that the BioCommons is responding systematically to new researcher needs identified through our community engagement process. 

Sarah Nisbet, User Experience and Support 
As the number of platforms and services steadily grow, harmonised user experience and support becomes increasingly important. With years of experience working across several organisations to roll out user support and service delivery systems, Sarah is passionate about delivering solutions for researchers. In her current role at Bioplatforms Australia Sarah is responsible for enhancing and extending cooperation and collaboration across various networks and capabilities. Sarah's new role will ensure that researchers have a streamlined and positive experience when using multiple Australian BioCommons platforms and services.