The OLS-7 program
Purpose: Training for early stage researchers and young leaders interested in furthering their Open Science skills
Outcome: Ambassadors for Open Science practice, training and education across multiple European and international bioinformatics communities.
Process: A 16-week mentoring & training program, based on the Mozilla Open Leader program, helping participants in becoming Open Science ambassadors by using three principles:
- Sharing essential knowledge required to create, lead, and sustain an Open Science project.
- Connecting members across different communities, backgrounds, and identities by creating space in this program for them to share their experiences and expertise.
- Empowering them to become effective Open Science ambassadors in their communities.
Table of content
Goals and Learning Objectives
The vision of OLS program is to strengthen Open Science skills for early stage researchers and young leaders in science.
At the end of the program, our participants will be able to:
- Describe and define the terms openness, open science, open leadership, community interactions, value exchanges, inclusivity, accessibility, open Science practices in developing resources and training
- Learn how to apply those principles to open leadership and working open in their projects and communities . Learn how to collect, invite, and tell stories that demonstrate how and why openness benefits the communities they serve
- Give original examples for the types of openness in science
- Design
- Illustrate the need for a project, its vision, and its goals
- Embrace and communicate the benefits of Open Science and how to strategically apply different open practices to their work
- Identify the public resources to share their data
- Identify the different type of Open Access and associated journals
- Build
- Start any project with openness in mind from day one
- Setup a project repository on GitHub using best practices for enabling collaboration
- Choose and apply open licenses appropriately
- Empower
- Create and enforce a safe working environment
- Promote the values of Open Science to empower others to lead and collaborate
- Include a broad range of contributors in their work
- Communicate their work and vision in a 2min demo of elevator pitch
- Lead an open project in science
Timeline
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December 1, 2022 : Call for Application opens
See the guidelines and templates
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December 12, 2022 (15:00 Universal Time): Application webinar( Talk + Q&A) - Recording
Watch recordings from previous webinars on YouTube
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January 11, 2023 (12:00 Universal Time): Application Clinic Call( Q&A)
At this call, OLS team will be available to provide help if you have any question related to your application. Register to attend
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January 15, 2023 : Call for applications closed
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February 1, 2023 : Successful applicants announced
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February 27, 2023: Start of the program
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June 12, 2023: End of the program
Schedule
During the program,
- Mentors and mentees meet every 2 weeks for a 30 minutes call
- Mentees participate every ~2 weeks to 90-minutes cohort calls during which the program leaders introduce new topics and resources, facilitate break-out discussions, and invite expert from the field to give talks
- Mentees can participate to skill-up, Q&A or coworking session in the weeks without cohort calls
- Mentors take part to mentoring workshop and calls
Organizers will inform participants of the week schedule by email.
Role Descriptions
Project leads (aka Mentees)
Participants join this program with a project that they either are already working on or want to develop during this program. More details about the role of a project lead (mentee) can be found here.
For the seventh round of the OLS program, we welcome 50 participants with 32 projects.
Mentors
Our project leads are supported in this program by our mentor-community who are paired based on the compatibility of expertise, interests and requirements of their projects. Our mentors are Open Science practitioners and champions with previous experiences in training and mentoring. They are currently working in different professions in data science, publishing, community building, software development, clinical studies, industries, scientific training and IT services.
Mentors advise and inspire
- Connect: to people, programs, companies
- Recommend: resources, readings, classes, experiences
- Feedback: for the project leads to consider
Pool of mentors
We thank the 32 mentors this round.
I am a Community Manager for eLife, a nonprofit committed to transforming research communication in part through improvements to research culture. As part of my role, I am responsible for creating and managing programmes and advisory groups to ensure that eLife’s work is driven by its global community, including its early-career researcher community. I am a keen advocate for open science and works to promote equity, diversity and inclusion in research. I am also a former researcher (immunology/virology), I earned a PhD in Immunology from the University New South Wales, Australia, after graduating from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland and did a short post-doc before making the switch to eLife.
Arielle has spent her career to date working in research-adjacent fields, starting with a stint at open access publisher PLOS, where she learnt the importance (and challenges) of open science, code, and data. Currently the Research Project Manager on the Tools, Practices & Systems programme at The Alan Turing Institute, she was a CSCCE Community Engagement Fellow in 2019 and continues to be actively involved in the community. She is a contributor to the Turing Way project.
I am a Mathematician and hold a Ph.D. in Cybernetics, currently working as a NeuroAI researcher to develop brain-augmented AI systems. I have been involved with several open sources (e.g. Linux software development community of Turkey) and open science (Brainhack, OHBM, OLS) communities and worked on various projects for the dissemination, training, and management of open science/source projects and communities. I developed guidelines and educational materials and organized many events and training courses to train government and military officials, students, and scientific researchers. I love creating means to bring community members with diverse backgrounds and expertise.
I am a researcher and graduate teaching assistant at the University of Buenos Aires. I design nanomaterials to solve problems, recently using machine learning to guide and optimize the process.
I’m a biotechnologist and SynBio Africa emerging leader in synthetic biology and biosecurity fellow working with Beneficial bio to locally produce reagents and equipment for molecular biology research and application. My passion for Open Science and research led me to meet and join amazing people and communities in their efforts to impact the global open science landscape including Open Bioeconomy Lab, AfricaOSH, Africa Makers Gathering, and Open Science Shop. I see a lot of potential in distributed manufacturing and over the past years, I’ve been working to democratize global access to affordable and impactful scientific instruments. Fervant advocate of Open Science in Africa I’ve been shar
open life science ambassador and bioinformatician interested with infectious disease research
Theoretical & Quantitative Ecology freak. SciComm & Open Science leader. Catalyst of movements.
I am a PhD student with several interests that keeps me busy outside the lab. I dabble in science communication
Jafsia is a data scientist working on health and particulary neglected diseases
Former neuro-geneticist (10 year of research on fruit fly memory and behavior), I have been more recently interested in data analysis and management, as a specialisation for my interests in open science (open research). I am presently working on ways (technical and social) to implement the principles of FAIR and open data in the lab workflow and ways to foster collaboration between researchers via the SmartFigure Gallery project.
Obanda joined Crossref in 2023 to work with Crossref Ambassadors in effectively engaging their communities and to support Crossref’s outreach initiatives. Obanda is passionate about building an inclusive research ecosystem where researchers across the globe can easily access scientific knowledge and make meaningful connections. His previous experience includes social entrepreneurship and science communication. For fun, Obanda likes to explore historical sites and experience sunset.
I am a Senior Project Manager at the University Hospital RWTH Aachen coordinating the development of digital health apps. I am an enthusiast for using tech to make processes more efficient and reproducible. In a previous position, I co-founded the Open Innovation in Life Sciences association that promotes open science among early career researchers in Switzerland. Things that make me happy at the moment include playing piano and introducing chapter books from my childhood to my school-aged kid.
I am a community manager at VU Amsterdam, helping researchers ger support and learn from each other. My background is in theoretical linguistics
Caleb is a 19/20 Mozilla Fellow and a Bioinformatician, interested in teaching, open science, reproducibility, machine learning, FAIR Genomics, and community building.
Michael is a PhD bioinformatics student with a keen interest in epigenetics and genomics. A co-founder of Bioinformatics Hub of Kenya (BHKI). He is a certified Software Carpentries instructor, an Open Life Science (OLS) graduate and a mentor. He is passionate about capacity building!
Role in OLS:
Director of Partnerships and Strategy
Malvika Sharan is a Senior Researcher at The Alan Turing Institute, where she leads a team of community managers and co-leads The Turing Way, a community-led handbook on data science. She is a co-founder of Open Life Science, and an active contributor of several open source/science projects. Connect with her on topics such as community building, open science, strategic collaboration and representation of marginalised members in leadership.
I am currently the infrastructure and impact measurement coordinator at MetaDocencia. I collaborate with The Turing Way, the OpenSciency project (formerly the NASA TOPS OpenCore team) and am a 2023 SSI and OLS fellow. I am also co-mentoring two Outreachy interns with the Open Science Community Saudi Arabia.
I am a sociologist and computer scientist who investigates how ground-truth data for machine learning is produced. The focus of my research are labor conditions and power dynamics in data generation and labeling. I lead the newly funded research group Data, Algorithmic Systems, and Ethics at Weizenbaum-Institut. I also work as a researcher at DAIR Institute where I am thinking through ways of engaging communities of data workers in AI research.
I am a Systems Engineer passionate about applying Computer Science to improve the way we live. Enthusiast and promoter of open science in the region.
Role in OLS:
Fellowship and Finance Manager
Patricia is currently a Research Data Specialist working at the Digital Curation Centre at the University of Edinburgh. Before joining the DCC, she was the Research Repository Advisor at the University of Birmingham and have previously worked as a data librarian at CERN’’s Scientific Information Service working closely with software developers to deliver data and code sharing solutions. She loves collaborating openly and making projects welcoming to new comers.
Riva is a Linguist that uses computational techniques to explore how language use changes. She is an editor at Programming Historian, a Software Sustainability Institute Fellow, and a member of the RLadies Leadership Team.
I am a Statistician by training. I have completed the Google Summer of Code 2020 with the Turing team of the Julia language organisation. Recently I have written the “R Developer’s Guide” with a funding support from the R Foundation.
I’m a molecular neuroscientist with a big interest in all about chromatin, sequencing and data analysis and more importantly…open science and reproducibility! To counteract the screen time, I play with sourdough, yoga, beer and whatever I can research about :)
Data scientist in training and young researcher pursuing a master’s degree in Systems Biology at Maastricht University. My current research interests are devoted to Network Science, Complex Systems, and Machine Learning for drug discovery. Moreover, I am involved in various initiatives to empower Bioinformatics in Ecuador and Latin America.
I have a Ph.D. in Biology (neuroscience) where I acquired diverse tools for data analysis. In the last years, I became interested in the impact of new technologies and their ethical implications in Public Health
Role in OLS:
Executive Director, Business and Development Lead
Yo is the executive director and a co-founder of OLS. As an EngD student at the University of Manchester, Yo is studying pathogen-related data sharing and sustainability of open source software.Yo is a founder of Code is Science, and previously, they were editor for the PLOS Open Source Toolkit, editor emeritus at the Journal of Open Source Software, board member of the Open Bioinformatics Foundation, and a software developer at the University of Cambridge, working on an open source biological data warehouse called InterMine.
Mentoring training
Mentorship roles can sound like a big personal responsibility and can be overwhelming for new mentors. To support our mentors in this program, we will offer training, topic-based guided discussions and opportunity for social interaction over 4 calls during the mentorship round:
- 2 training calls in the beginning of the cohort to get participants trained and prepared for their role as mentors
- 1 catch-up call in the middle of the cohort to discuss new topics and challenges that might have occurred and address them
- 1 call at the end to capture experiences of mentors and assess their interest in future cohorts
- Social and co-working calls schedule will be agreed among the mentors as per their needs and interests
In the mentor training, our mentors will then gain mentoring skills (active listening, effective questioning, giving feedback), learn to celebrate successes and gain confidence on navigating challenges in mentoring.
A dedicated slack channel will facilitate open discussions among mentors to help them discuss their experiences, challenges and tips and tricks (contact the team if you are not yet on this channel).
Experts
Experts are invited to join cohort calls or individual mentorship calls to share their experience and expertise during the program.
We thank the 4 persons who registered to be experts in this round.
Georgiana is a JupyterHub team member and an Open Source Infrastructure Engineer at 2i2c, where she is working with communities in research and education, managing the infrastructure behind the hubs they use and providing support for hub operations. Georgiana also cares about building inclusive communities and open work practices.
Role in OLS:
NASA Cohort Coordinator (contract)
I am a data manager at CONABIO where I collaborate in developing an Agrobiodiversity Information System. I am also a graduate researcher at UNAM, studying the challenges of integrating diverse data for sustainability. I love working in interdisciplinary projects that combine my interests in socio-ecological systems, data analysis and open research.
Laura is currently writing up her PhD thesis on the human rights impact of gender stereotyping in data use in social services in England.
Hello! I study meta-methodology in the behavioral sciences (when do our methods work and fail? and how can we improve them?) especially for vulnerable populations. Currently re-thinking how multi-country studies can be done, and best practices in ethical open science for qualitative research and indigenous psychology.
A dedicated slack channel will facilitate open discussions among experts and other participants in OLS-7 to help them expand their network while discussing relevant topics (contact the team if you are not yet on this channel).
Facilitators
Facilitators work closely with the OLS organisers to manage and run cohort calls. They lead efforts in preparing cohort call notes, co-hosting cohort calls and ensuring the sharing of call recordings and resources through OLS channelss
We thank the 10 persons who facilitated in this round.
I’m a research software engineer at The University of Manchester and an SSI Fellow. I’m passionate about open science and am always keen on learning more about it!
I’m a PhD student in environmental psychology with a passion to make science accessible to as many people as possible. The first step in this journey is through open science practices which is why I’m part of the core team at Agape focusing on creating a community of practice in which open science is normal practice for PhDs and other students or academics.
Jafsia is a data scientist working on health and particulary neglected diseases
A bioinformatician + biochemist passionate about drug discovery and finding solutions for Africa’s most burdensome diseases.
I am currently the infrastructure and impact measurement coordinator at MetaDocencia. I collaborate with The Turing Way, the OpenSciency project (formerly the NASA TOPS OpenCore team) and am a 2023 SSI and OLS fellow. I am also co-mentoring two Outreachy interns with the Open Science Community Saudi Arabia.
I am an Early Stage Researcher focused on developing and applying novel statistical and machine learning methods for studying human health and disease. I prefer to invest my time in science communication, open science, reproducibility, and community building.
I am a nuclear physicist in ‘an environmentalist body’ and an advocate of open science. I adore topics regarding machine learning, data science, clean energy, climate change, and anything nuclear.
I have a Ph.D. in Biology (neuroscience) where I acquired diverse tools for data analysis. In the last years, I became interested in the impact of new technologies and their ethical implications in Public Health
Organizers
Role in OLS:
Director of Learning and Technology
Bérénice is a bioinformatician (post-doc in the Freiburg Galaxy Team), analyzing biological data and developing tools for data analysis, mainly via Galaxy. In her current role, she also serves as a deputy training coordinator for ELIXIR Germany (de.NBI). Bérénice is passionate about training and education. She founded and co-leads the Galaxy Training Material project, and regularly giving talks and workshops on topics like data analysis, and tool development. She is also a founder of Street Science Community, a citizen science and outreach program.
Role in OLS:
Director of Finance and Operations
Emmy is the Director of Finance and Operations at Open Life Science and Engagement Lead at Invest in Open Infrastructure. She is passionate and curious about open, research culture and knowledge equity. Her expertise is in community design, and open research and scholarly communication.
Role in OLS:
Director of Partnerships and Strategy
Malvika Sharan is a Senior Researcher at The Alan Turing Institute, where she leads a team of community managers and co-leads The Turing Way, a community-led handbook on data science. She is a co-founder of Open Life Science, and an active contributor of several open source/science projects. Connect with her on topics such as community building, open science, strategic collaboration and representation of marginalised members in leadership.
Role in OLS:
Community Researcher & Programme Coordinator (contract)
Chilean worker and researcher. Social scientist (wannabe). I am an immigrant, not an expat. Open science hardware was my entrance to the world of critical open science. “Critical” as in: it matters who gets to be involved in science.
Role in OLS:
Executive Director, Business and Development Lead
Yo is the executive director and a co-founder of OLS. As an EngD student at the University of Manchester, Yo is studying pathogen-related data sharing and sustainability of open source software.Yo is a founder of Code is Science, and previously, they were editor for the PLOS Open Source Toolkit, editor emeritus at the Journal of Open Source Software, board member of the Open Bioinformatics Foundation, and a software developer at the University of Cambridge, working on an open source biological data warehouse called InterMine.
Collaborators
OLS team have established the following collaborations to support organisation specific projects within the OLS-7 cohort:
OLS-7 for EOSC-Life
OLS has received the EOSC-Life Training grant (first round), to train and mentor EOSC-RI members under the collaboration name OLS-7 for EOSC-Life. In the simplest terms, EOSC-Life is 13 European life science Research Infrastructures making their data FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) so that researchers can combine resources from multiple RIs for new research funded through our Open Calls and receive support through the variety of additional services we offer, including alignment with relevant standards and policies (GDPR, etc.).
OLS-7 for Faculty of Applied Sciences/TNW - TU Delft
Under the collaboration name OLS-7 for TNW, OLS has partnered with the Faculty of Applied Sciences through the Faculty Graduate School and the Data Steward, Dr. Esther Plomp at TU Delft. This partnership will offer training and mentoring to interested members from the Faculty of Applied Sciences to join the 7th cohort (OLS-7) individually or in teams. They will have an opportunity to develop Open Science aspects in the projects that they either already have been working on, or want to develop in the near future. Mentors will be preferably selected within their own discipline, as PhD candidates will be eligible for 5 Discipline-related credits for their Doctoral Education Programme.
OLS-7 for Turing
Under the collaboration name OLS-7 for Turing, OLS has partnered with The Turing Way, a project within the Tools, Practices and Systems Research Program in The Alan Turing Institute. This partnership will offer training and mentoring to interested members from Turing and The Turing Way communities to join the seventh cohort (OLS-7) individually or in teams. They will have an opportunity to develop Open Science aspects in the projects that they either already have been working on, or want to develop in the near future. Mentors will be preferably selected from The Alan Turing Institute but there will be a possibility to match projects with the right mentor from the broader cohort. The roles and benefits for the participants and the eligibility of proposed projects will be as described for our main program.
This program will provide a unique opportunity to individuals and teams in these organisations to integrate best practices for open and reproducible research in new or ongoing projects.
Resources
The resources available to the OLS-7 cohort members will facilitate their communication, training, mentoring and learning process during their participation in the program.
Calls
Cohort calls
The full cohort meetings take place every 2 weeks (unless mentioned otherwise) and last for 90 minutes.
During these calls:
- Organisers/hosts will introduce new topic of the week
- Speakers will present their work related to the topic of the week
- Participants will be given group discussion exercises
- An open Q&A will be run and notes will be co-developed
- Exercises will be given for the week to be completed before the mentee-mentor meeting
The calls will be hosted online using the Zoom web-conferencing option. A link for the calls will be shared for each meeting separately.
Look up the shared notes for each call linked to the schedule in this website. You will also be updated via email each week by the organisers with additional details to aid your participation.
If you can’t make it to a call:
The call will be recorded and available on the OLS YouTube channel after the call.
If you can not attend most calls during the program due to the time zone incompatibility or other personal obligation, please let the organisers know. If you are unable to communicate with your mentor regularly or do not engage in the program as planned, we may need to evaluate if you are able to finish the program.
Mentor-mentee calls
The Mentor-mentee calls take place every 2 weeks (unless mentioned otherwise) and last for 30 minutes.
During these calls:
- Mentors help their mentees evaluate their understanding of the new topics
- Mentees will complete their task assigned at the cohort calls using new skills learned that week
- Mentors and mentee will review progress together where mentees provide constructive feedback
- Mentors will connect mentees with other experts and get consulted on their project when needed
Coordinate with your mentor how you manage the notes and assignments for your 1:1 calls.
The online communication options can be agreed upon by the mentor-mentee pairs. A few options to explore are the following:
- Zoom: 40 mins limit for each call
- Google hangout: Free for members with google account
- Skype: Free, download the app
- Whereby.com: Free option, valid upto 4 participants
- Jitsi: Free, open source web-based call is possible
- Whatsapp or other phone-based calls: Only if both mentor and mentee are comfortable with exchanging numbers
If a mentor has to miss a mentee-mentor meeting, please discuss it with your mentee and reschedule your call. If you are unable to make it to any slot together, please find other ways (asynchronous documentation) to interact with your mentee.
If a mentor has to step back from the program for any reason, please communicate with the organisers to identify an alternative for their mentees.
Skill-up calls
In some weeks during which there is not cohort call, we will offer some optional skill-up calls.
The calls will be hosted online using the Zoom web-conferencing option. A link for the calls will be shared for each meeting separately.
Look up the shared notes for each call linked to the schedule in this website. You will also be updated via email each week by the organisers with additional details to aid your participation.
Q&A calls
The Q&A sessions take place in weeks during which there is not cohort call. These calls are optional but highly valuable for enhancing your understanding of the materials discussed in OLS-4 with the help of other participants.
The calls will be hosted online using the Zoom web-conferencing option. A link for the calls will be shared for each meeting separately.
Mentor calls
4 mentor calls will take place during the program.
The calls will be hosted online using the Zoom web-conferencing option. A link for the calls will be shared for each meeting separately.
Cafeteria calls
The Cafetería is a zoom call in which we pretend we are at a normal Catefería: we chat if we want, we work on our stuff, we work on stuff with others, we stay for 5 minutes or for the entire time. We drink coffee, tea, mate, water, any beverage.
Speaker Guide
We have a short guide for invited speakers.
Communication channels
Communication within the cohort members
OLS-7 Slack Channel
A dedicated Slack channel has been setup to facilitate real-time as well as asynchronous communication among the all members of the OLS-7 cohort. A personal invitation link will be shared with the participants via an email.
OLS-7 private Google group
Organizers inform participants of the week schedule by email. An archive of all emails can be found on the private OLS-7 Google group.
An invitation is sent to all participants (mentees, mentors, etc) at the beginning of the program. If it is not the case, please contact the team
Communication with members not in the cohort
General updates from the program such as new posts, collaborations and relevant retweets will be shared via our official Twitter channel.
Gitter
We have a public Gitter channel that can be used by members of the public contact the OLS team and community.
OLS Google group
Updates regarding new calls for applications, announcements, and final project presentations are posted on the OLS public Google group
Community Participation Guidelines
This project, as part of the Open Life Science community, is committed to providing a welcoming, friendly, and harassment-free environment for everyone to learn and grow by contributing. As a result, we require participants to follow our code of conduct, which may be found in the policies repository.