I am pleased, excited, and humbled to announce that I am stepping into the role of Executive Director of rOpenSci starting April 1.

First, let me give my gratitude to our outgoing Executive Director and friend Karthik Ram for his leadership and mentorship running rOpenSci the past decade. He’s been a steady hand and visionary that helped our community accomplish so much together in this time. Thanks to him and the rest of the team for entrusting me with this role.

I’ve had the pleasure of being an rOpenSci member for many years – as a volunteer, an editor for rOpenSci’s software peer-review since 2015, and director of the peer review program since 2019. I’m a disease ecologist at an NGO, where I work every day with the tools for reproducible analysis the rOpenSci community creates.

I am deeply committed to rOpenSci’s values of open and reproducible research using shared data, of creating infrastructure and a welcoming, inclusive community that enables researchers and developers to support each other in doing impactful research and work for public good.

As director I’m looking forward to working with our tremendous community of researchers, developers, reviewers, editors, mentors, Champions, and staff. My goal is to strengthen the pillars of our work and expand them through new partnerships: bringing diverse new voices and talent into the open-source ecosystem, improving research software through peer review, building networks of mutual support among research software developers, and creating new infrastructure and tools at the frontier of reproducible practice.

I know this community will continue to do great things together, and I’m glad I get to be part of it!

Read founding director Karthik Ram’s goodbye message