Introducing Innovation Leaders 2020

As a participant (“mentee”), you will come with your own project idea/prototype. With support from mentors, experts and other programme participants, you will learn how to better develop your project through group calls, one-on-one mentorship and expert consultations.

Group calls: There will be a group call every week (~1 hour), where you will progress through the curriculum, discuss in groups and share learnings. When appropriate, we will also invite guest speakers to join the calls.

Mentorship: You will be paired with a mentor who you will meet every two weeks. The mentor will be responsible for monitoring your progress, advising on prototype/project development and putting you in contact with suitable experts.

Learning from experts: A group of experts on various aspects of product design including marketing, software development and more will be available during the programme for consultation when necessary.

Based on Mozilla’s Open Leadership training series, you will learn about:

• Defining your project’s purpose and goal: What it is and what it is not
• Developing a project roadmap
• Basic product design techniques and concepts
• Building a contributors’ community and open co-creation
• Measuring success
• Community engagement
• Accessibility and inclusivity
• Sustainability, project maintenance and funding

We invite ideas for tools/platforms with one or more of the following goals:

• Improving the digital discovery, sharing, consumption and evaluation of research, including user experience, reach, efficiency and cost-effectiveness
• Encouraging or facilitating transparency, openness and collaboration in research
• Supporting the development of open tools, technologies and processes aimed at the above

Examples of such open projects include:

• PREreview: A platform for crowdsourcing reviews for preprints
• Plaudit: A widget for lightweight, open endorsements of research

We expect all participants to work openly and make resulting outputs openly available immediately or as soon as is feasible, using open-source licenses for code and software and permissive licenses (CC-BY or CC-0) for other content.

If you would like to create a project to promote best open science practices in life science and receive training in open science advocacy, please consider applying to Open Life Science, a mentorship programme designed for early-career researchers and young leaders to further their open science skills.

• Bradly Alicea, Head Scientist, Orthogonal Research and Education Lab
• Madeleine Bonsma-Fisher, PhD Student, University of Toronto, Department of Physics
• Sarah Brown, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Brown University
• Virginia Brussa, +Datalab /AREA
• Aidan Budd, Trainer, EMBO Solutions GmbH
• Luca Castiglione, PhD Student, Imperial College of London
• Dave Clements, Galaxy Training and Outreach, Galaxy Project, Johns Hopkins University
• Sanli Faez, Assistant Professor, Utrecht University
• Anne Fouilloux, Research Software Engineer, University of Oslo, Department of Geosciences, Norway
• Eriol Fox, Lead Designer, Ushahidi
• Katja Heuer, PhD Student, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences
• Ivo Jimenez, Research Scientist, UC Santa Cruz
• Apostolos Kritikos, Software Engineer/Researcher, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
• Lauren Maggio, Associate Professor of Medicine, Uniformed Services University
• Alexander Morley, Software Engineer, Babylon Health / University of Oxford
• Oarabile Mudongo, Research Fellow, Research ICT Africa
• Ian Mulvany, Head of Transformation, SAGE Publishing
• Daniel Nüst, Researcher, Opening Reproducible Research (o2r) @ University of Münster, Institute for Geoinformatics
• Bonface Ochieng, Service Coordinator Africa, Musoni Systems
• Pablo Diego Silva da Silva, DevOps Technical Leader, LAPPIS at University of Brasília (UnB, Brazil)
• Harry Smith, PhD Student In Nano Technology, UCL
• Kaitlin Stack Whitney, Assistant Professor, Rochester Institute of Technology
• Grant R. Vousden-Dishington, Research Software Engineer, Anti-Defamation League

• Stefanie Butland, Community Manager, rOpenSci
• Hannah Drury, Product Manager, eLife
• Saloni Garg, Software Engineering Intern, Red Hat
• Monica Granados, Policy Analyst, PREreview and Environment and Climate Change Canada
• Bastian Greshake Tzovaras, Director of Research, Open Humans Foundation & Research Fellow, Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity
• Chris Holdgraf, Post-doc, Project Jupyter / UC Berkeley
• Peter Hooper, Lead Node Developer, eLife
• Chris Huggins, User Experience Designer, eLife
• Suze Kundu, Head of Public Engagement, Digital Science
• Mauro Lepore, Research software developer, 2 Degrees Investing Initiative
• Giuliano Maciocci, Head of Product and UX, eLife
• Miranda Marcus, Lead Development Producer, Open Data Institute/ BBC
• Veethika Mishra, Interaction Designer, Red Hat
• David Moulton, Senior Front-End Developer, eLife
• Ross Mounce, Director of Open Access Programmes, Arcadia Fund
• Nikolaos Nerantzis, Physicist in Secondary Special Education, 1st Junior High School of Thessaloniki
• Maël Plaine, Product Manager, eLife
• Serah Rono, Community Engagement Lead, The Carpentries
• Daniela Saderi, Project Director, PREreview / Code for Science & Society
• Amit Sagtani, Software Engineering Intern, Perpule
• Sayak Sarkar, Senior Software Engineer, Red Hat
• Paul Shannon, Head of Technology, eLife
• Giorgio Sironi, Team Lead and SETI, eLife
• Gabriel Stein, Head of Operations and Product, Knowledge Futures Group
• Dr. Athina Tzovara, University of Bern
• Tyler Whitehouse, CEO, Gigantum
• Lilly Winfree, Product Manager, Open Knowledge Foundation
• Hao Ye, Postdoc, University of Florida
• Yo Yehudi, Software Developer, University of Cambridge
• Vot Zardzewialy, Head of Platform Solutions (Frontend), Cambridge University Press

1. Find out more about our mentors and experts

We are looking for innovators developing open-source tools/platforms to further open science and research communication. You should:

• Be passionate about openness
• Be open-minded and willing to learn (from peers and non-experts)
• Have a clear project idea within the programme’s scope that you would like to pursue
• Have the capacity and resources to lead your proposed project

In addition, you should:

• Be ready to spend a minimum of two hours per week between February and June 2020 to work on the programme elements, including joining group calls and mentorship meetings (asynchronous participation is allowed, please see the “accessibility and inclusion” section below)
• Have access to the Internet and preferably a microphone for calls
• Be fluent in English, the primary language the programme is conducted in

You should be passionate about openness, open minded and willing to learn from others.

Please fill in the application form by December 8, 2019. (Update January 2020: applications have now closed.)

1. Stay updated on future opportunities to participate

Your application will be blindly reviewed by at least two mentors of the programme. Applicants will be assessed and selected based on your answers to the questions on the application form and mentors’ preference.

We aim to announce successful applications early in January 2020.

We seek to host an accessible and inclusive programme:

• Asynchronous participation is allowed; all calls are recorded and available to be viewed later
• We will communicate a syllabus at the beginning of the programme and all call agendas before the calls
• The programme operates a strict Code of Conduct (to be communicated closer to the beginning of the programme)

Please let us know if you have any specific requirements via the application form. We aim to get back to you by mid-December to discuss the requirements and potential arrangements.