International Program Office
About US
The International Program Office (IPO) of the World Data System (WDS) acts under the leadership of the WDS Executive Director with guidance from the Scientific Committee. The IPO has the task of coordinating the operations of WDS and is responsible for implementing the decisions of the Scientific Committee, as well as performing day-to-day tasks. It is also responsible for organizing the meetings of the Scientific Committee, the biennial WDS Conference (SciDataCon), the WDS Members’ Forum, and outreach and promotional activities. The IPO is based in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, United States of America, hosted by the University of Tennessee Oak Ridge Innovation Institute.
Staff
Meet the Staff

Meredith Goins
Executive Director
Meredith comes to WDS with over two decades of management and leadership experience in working with state, federal and international scientific organizations. She graduated from the University of Tennessee with a Master’s in Information Science and from East Carolina University with a bachelor’s in communication. Meredith’s research interests include subject matter experts’ opinions and habits around peer review, particularly grant funding reviews and data repository certification reviews.
ORCIDÂ 0000-0002-0575-6240

Vincent (Vinnie) Bernabeo
Communications Specialist
Vinnie holds an MA in Communications: Literature & Writing Studies with an emphasis in Rhetorical Composition from California State University, San Marcos. He works across various media platforms and modalities, is an advocate for open access to data and multimedia, and asserts that all media should be considered a valid literary text.

Sarah Gonzalez
Program Manager
Sarah graduated from the University of Tennessee with a bachelor’s in Spanish and a Master’s in Information Sciences. She is interested in research about research data management and hopes to help researchers bridge the gap between data policies and data stewardship best practices.
ORCID 0000-0001-8540-0190Â

Katherine Read
Administrative Assistant
Katherine is a graduate of the University of Alabama with a bachelor’s in Telecommunication and Media. She has experience in academia as a media producer and researcher in communications. She is interested in research in information sciences, and she enjoys working with data to support WDS data repositories.
For general inquiries or to sign up for our monthly newsletter,
email us at wds-ipo@utk.edu.