“I entered into the data profession about three and a half years ago. I found the community to be very welcoming. The ideas of ethics and sustainability are starting to be brought forward more strongly now. Data aren’t just digits in the memory. They have real world effects in real world situations. One of the…

“I’m passionate about the transfer we’re seeing in research: moving from a cottage industry to a place where knowledge is increasingly coming through trusted processes. Research data will be an output that can be used by lots of people. The problem we have in research is that lots of people can’t use the data. If…

“We’re at this turning point where archivists are working in the area of research data – it’s just so cool to feel like you’re at the cutting edge of something and you can facilitate that conversation. Being an archivist and saying I work with research data can help expand people’s expectations of what archivists do…

“So when I was a kid, obviously Star Trek was the thing, because it was our better selves in the 23rd century. Civil rights, women’s rights, all those issues that were happening at that time in the 1960s were simplified in that show. But the thing that got me was the computer. Spock would have…

“I find it relaxing to work with data. I’m a mathematician by training and much more into applied mathematics, so I find recursive formulas very relaxing and linear algebra is like a fun puzzle, like a crossword. I like problem solving. ‘Big data’ is an excellent field for problem solving. I like finding elegant solutions…

“One of the coolest thing is starting out as a student in the research data management field, being early in my career, and then being able to interact with the same people over time. I feel like I’m kind of growing up as an individual. I feel I can say, hey, you guys made an…

“I’ve had people question the way I dress at work. But I think you need to express yourself the way you feel you should, because what really matters at this conference is that we’re all interested in making data available, accessible and preserving it, and we shouldn’t feel that we have to sacrifice who we…