Climate change is a complex problem with dimensions in the physical, natural and social sciences, humanities, arts and policy. Scholars are dissecting its causes, mechanisms and impacts and generating adaptation and mitigation solutions, but access to this knowledge is all too often severely limited. To solve an urgent, interdisciplinary problem like climate change, the full breadth of knowledge about it must be made immediately openly available—to everyone.
As the recent UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science underscores, openness is a powerful accelerant for finding solutions to our most pressing challenges. We have a timely opportunity to connect the community working to address climate change with those working to make research open by default to accelerate progress towards real solutions. This webinar will highlight innovative projects working at the intersection of climate and open research and outline paths for involvement in these efforts for members of both the climate change and open communities. Speakers will address the shared problem set between these communities as well as their common underlying values.
Panel:
The session will be moderated by Martina Donlon, Climate Communications Lead, United Nations Department of Global Communications.
Monica Granados (Presentation)
Dr. Monica Granados has a PhD in Ecology from McGill University, Canada. While working on her PhD, Monica discovered that incentives in academia promote practices that make knowledge less accessible. Since then, she has devoted her career to the open science space in pursuit of making knowledge more equitable and accessible working at organizations like PREreview and the Government of Canada. Monica is presently working at Creative Commons on the Open Climate Campaign promoting open access of climate and biodiversity research.
Joe McArthur (Presentation)
Joe McArthur is director of OA.Works, having co-founded the non-profit project in 2013 as a student. Joe has dedicated OA.Works to building powerfully simple tools to make open access easy and equitable. In collaboration with OA.Work’s partners and team, he has led the creation of tools like ShareYourPaper, InstantILL, and the OAbutton. Joe also worked for SPARC, a global advocacy organization, where he helped organize Open Access Week, OpenCon, and the Right to Research Coalition. Joe studied Pharmacology at University College London and worked for the pharmaceutical industry. As a student he achieved landmark victories in access to medicines policy and won international awards helping lead the UK’s largest student global health network. Today, he lives in Brighton, UK.
Omo Oaiya
Omo Oaiya is the Chief Strategy Officer of the West and Central Research and Education Network (WACREN). Prior to this, he was the pioneer CTO of WACREN and CEO of a private sector consultancy offering software development and project management support to research and academic institutions in Nigeria and other parts of Africa. He started and leads the LIBSENSE initiative, a collaboration of the regional African RENs (ASREN, Ubuntunet Alliance and WACREN), constituent national RENs, and national library consortia building communities of practice and strengthening local and national services to support open science and research in Africa. Being a certified SIM3 Auditor, he has keen interests in the establishment and maturity of security teams (CSIRTs) in NRENs.
Gitanjali Yadav
Dr. Gitanjali Yadav is a scientist at NIPGR New Delhi, a Data Science Professor at IISER Bhopal and a Trustee of St Edmund's College at theUniversity of Cambridge. She is an expert in food security and conservation research. As co-founder of #semanticClimate, she is also an advocate for open science and using Artificial Intelligence for climate research. She has a diverse educational background with a PhD in Computational Immunology, a Master's degree in Biomedical Research and a Graduate degree in Botany from the University of Delhi, India. Dr. Yadav has received several recognitions for her work globally, including the Hamied Fellowship from the University of Cambridge, Exceptional Talent Award from the Royal Society of London, INSA Medal & IYBA by the Government of India, and the SASTRA-Obaid Siddiqi Life Science Award 2021.