Please Welcome our Newest Cohort of Certified Instructor Trainers!

We are excited to announce the latest additions to our community of Carpentries Instructor Trainers! Instructor Trainers (also known as “Trainers”) co-teach Instructor Training, host teaching demonstrations, and participate in oversight and maintenance of our Instructor Training program. This cohort includes new Trainers from Argentina, Germany, Mexico, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Teaching new Carpentries Instructors is a vital and impactful role in The Carpentries! We are proud to welcome these accomplished people joining our Trainer community and taking the lead to advance our mission around the world.

If you think that you might also like to join the Trainer community, take a moment to review our last call for applications, then send us an email at instructor.training@carpentries.org if you would like to be notified the next time we invite applicants for this role.

Please Welcome our New Trainers!

Ann M James

Dr. Ann Myatt James is a Data Services Librarian with George Washington University’s Libraries and Academic Innovation (LAI) in Washington, DC. In this position, she works on a diverse team of librarians and information professionals who support researchers at all levels looking to find, use, analyse, visualise, publish, share, and preserve data of all types including quantitative, qualitative, and geospatial. Ann is a founding advisory council member and former board member of CREA which is a literacy and education NGO in rural Tola, Nicaragua.

Ann arrived at GW LAI in 2019 with extensive experience working with data as a geographic analyst and applied social science researcher at Penn State University, Bucknell University, University of Maryland-Baltimore, and Enterprise Community Partners, Inc. which is a non-profit community development organisation in Columbia, Maryland. Ann has a BBA (summa cum laude) in Management Information Systems (MIS) and an MA in Geography from the University of Oklahoma as well as a PhD in Geography from Penn State University. She has been a certified Carpentries instructor since 2020.

In her spare time, Ann enjoys outdoor activities, reading, gardening, yoga, cooking, and travelling. She, her spouse, and their yellow labrador retriever call the United States and Spain home. She has basic fluency in Spanish and plans to continue her learning of languages in the fall.

Eilis Hannon

Eilis Hannon is a Senior Research Fellow in Bioinformatics in the Complex Disease Epigenetics Group at the University of Exeter Medical School and currently holds an EPSRC Research Software Engineering Fellowship. She is a mathematician highly experienced in the analysis of human genomic datasets and has a particular interest in disorders of the brain and neurodevelopment. Her research focuses on integrating multiple layers of genomic data to model the dynamic nature of gene expression and epigenetic variation to explore how this mediates genetic risk for complex diseases.

Eilis contributes to the training and education of postgraduates and staff at the University of Exeter through the Coding for Reproducible Research training Programme which, she co-ordinates, and as Data Science Lead in the MRC funded GW4 Biomed DTP, Health Theme Lead in the Institute of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, Deputy Institutional Reproducibility Lead, and lead for the MSc module Statistics for Health Data Science.

Fredo Erxleben

Fredo Erxleben is a Research Software Engineer and Trainer at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf. He creates, organises and holds workshops for researchers to help them get up to speed with the basics of software development, version control and project management.

He has been teaching in academia since his early study years, covering software engineering as well as hardware-related subjects, which he still enjoys a lot. Additional experience was gathered when successfully heading a team of student developers for industrial projects.

When not teaching or programming, Fredo enjoys nerding about almost any topic he comes across.

Heladia Salgado

Heladia Salgado studied Computer Science at the Technological Institute of Zacatepec. She currently works at the Program of Computational Genomics of the Center for Genomic Sciences, UNAM. One of her interests is the development of scientific software attached to the FAIR principles and software development models. She coordinates the development of the RegulonDB database software. Her research contributions are mainly focused on the field of bioinformatics.

She participates as a teacher in bioinformatics courses in the Degree in Genomic Sciences and in the Doctoral Program in Biomedical Sciences at UNAM. She strives to contribute to the growth of The Carpentries and other open communities in his mission to facilitate the teaching of informatics and bioinformatics in Mexico and Latin America.

Jesica Formoso

Jesica Formoso is a research assistant at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina. Her research focuses on the development of mathematical abilities in children and their relationship with domain-general cognitive skills such as working memory and processing speed. She teaches statistics and programming with R in the same institution, with a particular interest in helping others make their research reproducible by assisting them in developing data management and programming skills. In the same line, she contributes as an organizer at the Buenos Aires chapter of RLadies. She is also a member of MetaDocencia, an organization that promotes equitable access to scientific and technical knowledge for Spanish-speaking communities.

Lisanna Paladin

Lisanna Paladin (she/they) is a professional in the field of scientific research support and community management, currently working as a Bioinformatics Community Project Manager at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL). With a background in biology and bioinformatics and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences, she has enhanced and diversified her academic training through participation in international schools focused on project management, infrastructure, leadership, and community building. She is committed to advancing Open (Science), empowering researchers through training and community-building initiatives and professionalising the research infrastructure careers that are necessary to nurture a collaborative and sustainable environment. In line with her values, during her doctoral studies she led the national group of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) student council, RSG-Italy. Towards the end of her Ph.D., in 2019, she acquired the Carpentries instructor certification and recently the ELIXIR-GOBLET Train the Trainers one. Beyond her training expertise, she is passionate about building sustainability in Open Research initiatives and secured pan-European funding for and led multiple scientific network projects. She strives to contribute to the growth of The Carpentries and other open communities in their mission to empower people accessing research worldwide.

Macarena Quiroga

Macarena Quiroga is a PhD Student at University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and a Professor in Universidad Nacional de Hurlingham. She studies psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology, and education. Her research is about language acquisition in diverse socioeconomic contexts. She is a member of LatinR, a Latin American conference about the use of R in research and development, and of RELIF, a civil association about linguistics. In 2022 she became a Carpentries Instructor and in 2023 she joined the Social Sciences Curriculum Advisory Team. She is passionate about R and helping others learn.

Mmasibidi Setaka

Mmasibidi Setaka is a Digital Humanities Researcher focusing on the Sesotho language at the South African Centre for Digital Language Resource (SADiLaR). Her research interests lie in Lexicography for Sesotho. She has been involved in organising and teaching the Carpentries, to increase capacity in computational skills in South Africa specifically for the Humanities and Social Sciences and is part of the Executive Committee of the Digital Humanities Association of Southern Africa. She has organised conferences such as the Digital Humanities Association of Southern Africa DHASA 2021 and workshops such as the Resources for African Indigenous Languages (RAIL 2020, 2021 and 2022 and 2023) and Technologies for Enhanced Documentation of African Languages (TEDAL). She is also a member of the organising committee for Hundzula retreat that brings together linguists and NLP practitioners in one space to discuss challenges and opportunities that arise between the two disciplines.

Paula Pappalardo

Dr. Paula Pappalardo is a marine ecologist conducting research at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. On her current project, she is working on identifying invasive species from diversity surveys using genetic data. Paula enjoys collaborative, multi-disciplinary research related to: 1) synthesizing data on species traits, distributions, and their environment to better understand the mechanisms that promote, maintain, and can alter biodiversity; 2) contributing to develop and test statistical methods to synthesize quantitative data and to quantify species diversity.

Paula’s research led her to highly value opportunities for acquiring data management and programming skills, and in general to learning new tools that will make her daily tasks more efficient (such as R programming, her favorite tool). Paula became a Carpentries Instructor in Feb 2021 to help pass this knowledge along and has been contributing to the Smithsonian Carpentries group as a workshop organizer, instructor, and hosting the Carpentries Community Chats, an informal space to expand on the tools we learn at the Carpentries workshops. Paula values the Carpentries mission and it is happy to be part of an inclusive and welcoming community that can empower people to learn computing skills.

Rooweither Mabuya

Rooweither Mabuya is a Digital Humanities researcher with a focus on isiZulu at the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR). Her research interests lie in the systematic creation of relevant digital text, speech, and multi-modal resources related to the development of isiZulu and to promote the use of Digital Humanities related methods and tools within the isiZulu research community.

Areas of expertise are General Linguistics, Corpus Linguistics, and Digital Humanities. Rooweither became a certified Carpentries instructor in 2018. She also serves as an EXCO member of Digital Humanities Association of Southern Africa (DHASA).

Samantha Ahern

Samantha Ahern is a former secondary school educator and has worked as a trainer specialising in programming and quantitative analysis in the Higher Education sector since January 2012. In October 2022 she became the Senior Digital Research Trainer at University College London, this is a new role working with the Centre for Advanced Research Computing on the strategic development of their Education product.

In response to the Covid pandemic in the Summer of 2020 she became the Faculty Learning Technology Lead for The Faculty of the Built Environment (The Bartlett). The role was initially jointly line managed between the Faculty (Vice-Dean Education) and the central Digital Education Advisory team. In August 2021 it transitioned to a fully faculty based role. The main responsibilities were to co-ordinate support and develop connected learning capability across the faculty in conjunction with the faculty’s Connected Learning Leads and education teams; with regards to policy, technology and pedagogy. In addition to the role within the faculty she continued to support some DigiEd Advisory Team initiatives and continues to work closely with Digital Education and colleagues in the Arena Centre.

In Autumn 2019 she successfully acquired Associate CMALT accreditation, then Senior CMALT in August 2022. She has held Fellowship of Advance HE since 2018 with the aim of becoming a Senior Fellow. After a successful self-nomination she became a Fellow of the University of London’s Centre for Online and Distance Education in January 2022.

Her research activity has previously focused on learning analytics and student wellbeing. She has recently become the ARC led research theme lead for the Transforming Our Research Communities theme.

Veronica Jimenez Jacinto

Degree in Applied Mathematics and Computing from UNAM, Mexico. Master in Science from the “ Centro de investigación y Estudios Avanzados” of the National Polytechnic Institute, Mexico. Academic stay at the “Instituto de Cibernética, Matemática y Fisica” of the Cuban Academy of Sciences, in Havana, Cuba

Currently, Veronica is the Responsible for the Quality Manage System of the “Laboratorio Nacional de Apoyo Tecnológico a las Ciencias Genómicas”, (Mexico) under the ISO-9001 and ISO -17025 standards for Laboratories.

She actually collaborate with the “Unidad Universitaria de Secuenciación Masiva de ADN y Bioinformática” based at the “Instituto de Biotecnologia” UNAM, Mexico, since its foundation in 2009, where she is in charge of the primary analysis of massive sequencing data, analysis of differential expression of genes, assembly of de novo transcriptomes and the Coordination of High Specialty Next Generation Sequencing courses.

Co-founder of Rladies Cuernavaca, Morelos, México. She has a Sofware-Carpentry certification for teaching computer courses for scientists and is part of their group of translators and maintenance of courses for Latin America. She also has the Oracle Database Administration Certification.

Greg Chism

Dr. Greg Chism is a data scientist, educator, and behavioral ecologist with a passion for open access data science and democratising education. As an assistant Professor of Practice at the University of Arizona Data Science Institute, he develops open source statistics, data visualisation, and reproducible research curriculum, while measuring their educational impact.

With extensive experience in data analytics, data ethics, and data storytelling, Dr. Chism is dedicated to helping others harness the power of data for compelling storytelling and informed decision-making. An advocate for education for all, he bridges the gap between data analysis and real-world applications.

An advocate for education for all, Dr. Chism is dedicated to equipping individuals with the tools and knowledge necessary to harness the power of data in their respective fields.