Two new members elected to OBF Board

Posted on October 6, 2021 by Nomi Harris

The OBF held a public Board meeting on September 21, 2021, via Zoom. During the meeting, one Board member, Bastian Greshake Tzovaras, whose term expired, was elected to another term as Board member-at-large, and two new Board members were elected: Hilyatuz Zahroh and Caleb Kibet. Additionally, two proposals were presented (see below). The meeting minutes will be made available in the obf-docs GitHub repository.

Hilyatuz (“Hilya”) Zahroh is a bioinformatician at the Genetics Research Centre, Universitas YARSI, in Indonesia. She also works with Asia Pacific Bioinformatics Network (APBioNet) to facilitate the sharing of bioinformatics knowledge and skills through education and trainings in the Asia-Pacific region, and is involved with RINarxiv, a preprint server for Indonesia. She was a vice-chair of the 18th International Conference on Bioinformatics (InCoB) 2019, and the treasurer of the Bioinformatics and Biodiversity Conference (BBC) 2020. Hilya is committed to fast-forwarding science by promoting open access in bioinformatics and facilitating the learning of bioinformatics skills within communities.

Caleb Kipkurui Kibet is a bioinformatics researcher at ICIPE, the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology in Kenya, as well as an adjunct lecturer at Pwani University. He is the founder and project lead of OpenScienceKE, which seeks to promote open science practices in bioinformatics. In 2019-2020, Caleb was a Mozilla Open Science Fellow; his work involved developing FAIR Genomics Data Management policy, frameworks, and infrastructure; building a community of Open Science enthusiasts; and promoting the adoption of machine learning tools in biomedical research.

Above: Board candidates Caleb Kibet (bottom left) and Hilyatuz Zahroh (bottom right) with current Board members during the public OBF Board meeting on 21-Sept-2021.

Two proposals were announced as pending submission to the OBF membership for a vote of approval:

  1. The OBF is proposing a Community Support Sponsorship grant programme (see https://www.open-bio.org/2021/05/11/obf-community-support-sponsorship/), which would give funds to grassroots communities in return for our logo appearing on their event webpages and materials, acknowledging our support. We seek community input; please add your comments to https://github.com/OBF/obf-docs/issues/86. 
  1. The OBF would like to adopt a code of conduct (COC) for its activities including meetings and member projects. See pull request https://github.com/OBF/obf-docs/pull/78 for the proposal, and please share your thoughts.

A membership vote on these will be held within the next 6 weeks, and the Board resolved to accept the result as binding for whether to formally implement them.

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