External Advisory Board

Christine Borgman is Professor and Presidential Chair in Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She is the author of more than 150 publications in the fields of information studies, computer science, and communication. Prof. Borgman's research interests and teaching areas include information science, information retrieval, electronic publishing, information-seeking behavior, scientific data use and policy, scholarly communication, bibliometrics, and information technology policy. Her book, From Gutenberg to the Global Information Infrastructure: Access to Information in a Networked World (MIT Press, 2000), won the Best Information Science Book of the Year Award from the American Society for Information Science and Technology.

Fabrizio Gagliardi has over 30 years of experience in computing applied to physics. His professional experience includes international computing projects at CERN, in the CERN member states and in USA. From 1996 to 1999 he led the Data Management services of the Information Technology division, and from 1998 to 2000 he was in charge of the CERN participation to the EU project Eurostore. In July 1999 he was appointed responsible for the IT divisional industrial technology transfer programme. From January 2001 to March 2004, he led the EU DataGrid project. From April 2004 through October 2005, he served as the Project Director of the EGEE project. He is founding member of the International Advisory Committee of the Global Grid Forum and of other international and European committees. Fabrizio Gagliardi took leave from CERN on November 1st, 2005 to join Microsoft Corporation with the title of EMEA Director for the Technical Computing Initiative.

Edward Vanden Berghe is currently the Executive Director of the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS), based at Rutgers University, New Jersey. Before joining OBIS, he was the manager of the Flanders Marine Data- and Information Centre, based at the Flanders Marine Institute in Oostende, Belgium. He has been involved in several data integration exercises, and through these activities came to appreciate the important role of metadata, and of data repositories. He is member of several working groups on data and information management in the framework of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO and of the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas.

Erwin Laure is the Technical Director of the EU funded project  "Enabling Grids for E-Science in Europe (EGEE)" working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). After joining CERN in 2002 he worked on data management issues within the EU DataGrid (EDG) project, became the Technical Coordinator of EDG, and coordinated the middleware re-engineering activities in the first phase of EGEE. He holds a PhD in Business Administration and Computer Science from the University of Vienna, Austria. His research interests include grid computing with a focus on data management in grid environments as well as programming environments, languages, compilers and runtime systems for parallel and distributed computing. As of November 2008 he will be leading PDC-HPC, the supercomputing center at the Royal Technical University at Stockholm, Sweden.

Serge Michel Garcia holds a Doctorate in Sciences (ScD) of the University of Aix-Marseille (France, 1976). Initially specialized in shrimp population dynamics and tropical fisheries management, he spent a decade working in Africa, on fisheries assessment and 3 decades working in FAO as an assessment and management specialist. He headed the national Oceanographic Research Centre (CRODT) of Dakar-Thiaroye (Senegal, 1976-79), the FAO Marine Resources Service (1984-90 and the FAO Fisheries Resources Division (then Fishery Management Division) before retiring in 2007. During these last two assignments, he has been monitoring the state of world fishery resources, tirelessly warning about un-sustainability of most current fishing regimes, promoting inter alia the use of open information systems, sustainability indicators, the precautionary and the ecosystem approach to fisheries and a more systemic approach to fisheries assessment and management. Among other responsibilities, he is a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the CORE Census of Marine Life project (CoML) and member of the Governance Board of the Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS).

Lucille Nowell is on assignment as a Program Director in the area of Data, Data Analysis and Visualization for the Office of Cyberinfrastructure at National Science Foundation (NSF), Lucy Nowell is a Chief Scientist from the Information Analytics group at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). She is also an alumna of the Virginia Tech Digital Libraries Research Laboratory, where she designed one of the first information visualization user interfaces for the Envision Project. Her research interests include long-term data preservation/archiving, user interaction with information in the context of massive data, usability engineering for information exploitation systems and digital electronic libraries, cognitive issues in user interface design, information visualization, intelligent user modelling and intelligent user interfaces, and information storage and retrieval. As Program Director for Data, Data Analysis and Visualization in NSF's Office of Cyberinfrastructure, her program responsibilities include: Sustainable Digital Data Preservation and Access Network Partners (DataNet); Community-based Data Interoperability Networks (INTEROP); Software Development for Cyberinfrastructure (SDCI) and, Strategic Technologies for Cyberinfrastructure (STCI).

Per Öster is the newly appointed Director of Application Service at Scientific Computing, Ltd. (CSC) in Espoo, Finland. Per Öster previously worked at the Center for Parallel Computers at KTH in Sweden and is internationally recognized as one of the Nordic region’s top specialists in grids. He was actively involved with the EGEE II initiative funded by the European Commission as a member of the project’s management board. Now, CSC is serving as one of the nine leading organizations in the EGI Design Study, with CSC’s area of responsibility being communications and external relations. EGI is meant to continue from where the EGEE III project ends.