NMDC Champions

NMDC Champions understand and appreciate the value of well-curated data, and are willing to advocate for the importance of FAIR microbiome data.

Featured NMDC Champions

I became an NMDC champion because I want to work together toward a culture of open and multi-disciplinary science--enabling global search and integration of microbiomes with associated environmental data now and in the future.

Joan Damerow

LBNL, Postdoctoral Fellow

Joan is interested in best practices for preserving and reusing ecological data to determine changes over time. Her past research focused on resurvey studies, digitizing natural history specimen data, and extensive data quality control. She now works in community engagement and developing data standards in partnership with Environmental Systems Science researchers to support multi-disciplinary data integration and reuse.

@JoanDamerow

"I became an NMDC Champion because I am excited to be part of this collaborative community developing efforts to increase awareness, access and engagement in the microbiome research community."

JP Dundore-Arias

California State University, Monterey Bay, Assistant Professor

JP is an Assistant Professor of Plant Pathology at CSU Monterey Bay. In addition to his research on agricultural microbiomes to enhance soil health and biologically suppress plant pathogens, he trains young scientists through Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) and coordinates the NSF-funded Agricultural Microbiomes Research Coordination Network.

@AgMicrobiomes

Beautifully harmonized metadata is like a love letter to the future. NMDC is the global community and service making sure these letters get delivered!

Bonnie Hurwitz

University of Arizona, Associate Professor

Dr. Bonnie Hurwitz is an Associate Professor of Biosystems Engineering at the University of Arizona and BIO5 Institute Fellow. She has worked as a computational biologist for nearly two decades on interdisciplinary projects in both industry and academia. Her research on the human/earth microbiome incorporates large-scale –omics datasets, high-throughput computing, and big data analytics towards research questions in “One Health”.

@hurwitzlab

Active NMDC Champions

Interested in becoming an NMDC Champion?

Read up on what it means to be an NMDC Champion on our Engagement Roadmap page. Then, fill out our NMDC Champion application.

Kai Blumberg (UA)

"I became an NMDC champion for because I want to participate in the creation of a unified and interoperable semantic layer which can be used to join data from different scientific disciplines. As an early career scientist, I'm very excited to potentially play a role in enabling scientists to unify our knowledge and data to better address global scale environmental challenges."

@Kia_Bloomburg

Jenny Bratburd (UW Madison)

PhD Candidate

“I am excited about the potential for microbiome research to improve human health, and I believe we need to improve rigor and reproducibility to achieve that potential.”

John-Marc Chandonia (LBNL)

"I became an NMDC Champion because I am interested in collaborating to develop new technologies for managing data. I am particularly interested in solving long-standing challenges in making data truly interoperable and reusable."

Joan Damerow (LBNL)

Postdoctoral Fellow

@JoanDamerow

Bill Duncan (LBNL)

"I became an NMDC champion because of the great need to develop systems that bring together data from multiple microbiome data repositories. The development of these systems is a truly exciting opportunity to advance an emerging branch of science."

JP Dundore-Arias (California State University, Monterey Bay)

Assistant Professor

"I became an NMDC Champion because I am excited to be part of this collaborative community developing efforts to increase awareness, access and engagement in the microbiome research community."

@AgMicrobiomes

Alexis Garretson (George Mason University)

Graduate Research Fellow

"I hope as an NMDC Champion I can apply my knowledge of data rescue, scientific gateways, and data integration efforts to support the ongoing work of NMDC and advocate for FAIR microbiome data."

@GarretsonAlexis

Sean Gibbons (ISB)

"I became an NMDC Champion because I believe that access to usable public data and metadata is a right and not a privilege."

@gibbological

Bonnie Hurwitz (University of Arizona)

Associate Professor

Beautifully harmonized metadata is like a love letter to the future. NMDC is the global community and service making sure these letters get delivered!

@hurwitzlab

Ulas Karaoz (LBNL)

"I became an NMDC Champion because as microbiome science shifts from data generation to interpretation, FAIR data is critical to enable integration of global datasets."

@ukaraoz

Luke Thompson (NOAA)

"I am excited to be an NMDC Champion because our community has a special opportunity to make our data more reusable -- empowering scientists, citizens, and governments to use this data for research, medicine, conservation, and restoration."

@lukethompson

Alonna Wright ( UC Davis)

PhD Candidate

“I believe microbiome data helps us better understand our world and our health. Making this data more accessible and adherent to FAIR data practices would provide opportunities for meaningful analyses that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.”

@lonna_wright

Ying Zhang (University of Rhode Island)

Associate Professor

I see from my own work the importance of benchmarking diverse approaches and making sure data obtained from different studies are standardized for comparison. I want to work with scientists of the same interests to help promote the production and documentation of high quality data.

@yingmicro

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