Meet the New WDS Scientific Committee Members
Devika Madalli
Professor Devika Madalli is the Director of the Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET), UGC-Inter University Centre in Gandhinagar, India. Prior to joining INFLIBNET, Dr. Madalli served as a Professor of the Documentation Research and Training Centre, Indian Statistical Institute, for 27 years and as an adjunct faculty at the Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science (DISI), University of Trento, Italy. An advocate of Open Science practices, Dr. Madalli has extensive experience in teaching, research, and capacity building. Her interest lies in Data and Knowledge Management, Knowledge Organization and Semantics, and Open Data Repositories.
Dr. Madalli has served as a member of the Technical Advisory Board of the Research Data Alliance (RDA). She also serves as co-chair for RDA interest groups on Research Evaluation, Global Research Commons (until April 2024), and Sustainable Development Goals (SDC). Additionally, she is a member of the governance board of DRYAD and has served as an expert/consultant to UNESCO, UNFAO, OECD, Commonwealth of Learning, and the European Commission. She is a recipient of Fulbright and Erasmus Mundus fellowships.
Dr. Madalli is on the advisory board of Universal Decimal Classification. She serves as the chair of OpenAccessIndia Working Group. She served on the advisory panel and scientific committees of several international conferences such as SWIB, ICADL, MTSR, SciDataCon, LODLAM, and ICSD. She has been a member of editorial panels of prestigious journals such as Knowledge Organization (ISKO), Data Science Journal, Library Hi-Tech among several others and has published widely.
Johnathan Kool
Based in Australia, Dr. Johnathan Kool graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Wildlife Biology from McGill University; was awarded a Master of Environmental Management (MEM) in Coastal Environmental Management from Duke University; and completed his Ph.D. in Marine Biology and Fisheries from the University of Miami. Dr. Kool is currently the Director of the Australian Antarctic Data Centre. He has also been employed by Geoscience Australia; jointly by James Cook University and the Australian Institute of Marine Science; the World Resources Institute (as their GIS Lab manager), and the Appalachian Mountain Club.
Dr. Kool has a keen interest in complexity and complex systems, and how data and information systems can be used in making decisions and finding solutions. Over the course of his career, he has found interesting parallels between genetics, diseases, languages, intra-organizational communications, and cat memes. He has had a lifelong interest in international travel and engagement, and he values how it forces him to break preconceived notions and think in broader terms.
