More About Jonah Duckles

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I'm thrilled to be stepping into the role of Executive Director of the Software Carpentry Foundation. I come to you as an experienced instructional community member excited to share my administrative, grant writing and professional background to help the Software Carpentry Foundation become sustainable and reach exciting new goals.

I’ve taught Software Carpentry around the world and it has made me passionate about spreading the movement. Scientists are accumulating data faster than their training has prepared them for. They need new approaches to raise the level of the technical conversations when thinking about complicated research challenges. Software Carpentry is an incredibly powerful approach for improving scientific exploration in this data-driven era. It helps scientists use their existing skills and do even more. Our work is important and has impact!

For those of you that don't know me, I come to you from a position as The Director of Informatics and Innovation at The University of Oklahoma. My biggest successes at The University of Oklahoma came when I was able to empower researchers to tackle bigger challenges than they thought they were capable of. I was able to mentor and advise scientists in computation and data management so that they could imagine their research questions in new and more effective ways. I worked to build a university-wide coalition, providing the necessary funding and support structure to expand services to disciplines struggling with data and computational challenges.

My scientific background is in the areas of Landscape Ecology and Earth observation remote sensing and I have been an analyst at a private firm which produces estimates of global crop production fusing satellite, weather and tabular data for its clients. I have also facilitated hands-on long-term technology planning workshops as a consultant with government agencies and large technology companies.

I work most effectively in a collaborative and entrepreneurial ways, always hungering for new ideas and new ways to strategically position groups of people and organizations. In just the last five years, I've participated in over $30-million dollars in outside funded grants with my role involving leadership, teaching and mentorship in computational and data best-practices for the grants. I look forward to doing similar work for Software Carpentry, building grants and initiatives that can benefit The Foundation and its member organizations into the future.

I am here to work with the entire Software Carpentry community to continue the excellent work that has already been done. I invite you to keep in touch with me and to give me your ideas about how we can work towards helping researchers accomplish more than they imagined they were capable of. I'm on twitter as @jduckles, you can email me as execdir@software-carpentry.org and I maintain a personal website.