Meet our 2026 Instructor Trainers

The Carpentries welcomed a new cohort of community members into Instructor Trainer Training, preparing them to take the next step in their leadership journey with The Carpentries. Instructor Trainers play an essential role in our community by preparing new Instructors to deliver inclusive, effective, and learner-centered training around the world.

Over ten weeks, this cohort has learned, practiced, collaborated, and grown together as they prepared to become certified Instructor Trainers. This year’s cohort brings together 14 community members from across North America, Europe, and Oceania, representing communities from Boston to Christchurch and many places in between.

Becoming an Instructor Trainer is more than earning a new certification. These community members are helping strengthen the future of The Carpentries by developing the people who will train our next generation of Instructors. Their leadership expands our capacity to deliver high-quality training, support our global community, and continue advancing our mission.

We are incredibly proud of all they have accomplished and excited to welcome them into The Carpentries Instructor Trainer community.

Meet Our 2026 Instructor Trainers

Allie Tatarian

Allie Tatarian (they/them) is a librarian at Tufts University in Boston. They first became interested in Carpentries when they used the SC lesson to learn Git for a job. Today, Allie leads the Carpentries program at Tufts, and has served as a host, instructor, helper, and maintainer for the Carpentries.

Chris Wood

I am a Project Manager at the UK’s National Supercomputer Centre, based at the University of Edinburgh. My research background is in computational environmental chemistry, and I have an ongoing interest in supporting researchers from the life science and environmental domains - whether delivering training, optimising code, or helping to manage large datasets. I’m also a Module Coordinator on the MSc in High Performance Computing that we run at Edinburgh. I’ve been formally involved with the Carpentries since 2018, became an Instructor in 2020, and have contributed to both established and incubator Carpentries courses.

Eva Lekkerkerker

Eva Lekkerkerker has a background in social sciences, with a specialization in sociology and interdisciplinary research methods. She obtained her Research Master’s degree from the University of Amsterdam, where she developed expertise in mixed-methods research and conducted fieldwork in Ghana on sustainability and socio-technical innovation.

Her work focuses on connecting people, knowledge, and institutions through training, coordination, and community-building. She has a track record in developing learning programmes and aligning stakeholders across academia, digital skills initiatives, and Open Science.

Eva was introduced to The Carpentries in 2022 when she worked as Digital Skills Coordinator at the University of Amsterdam, running a local Carpentries programme. She contributed to the establishment of a national Carpentries Coordinators group - bringing training coordinators across the Netherlands together to share knowledge, expertise and resources together to run successful Carpentries programmes.

Eva currently works as Network Coordinator for Research Software Training NL, where she connects research software training communities at a national level, supports instructors, and facilitates knowledge exchange across institutions.

Francisca Javiera (Javi) Rudolph

I’m a computational disease ecologist, where I build models that help wildlife and public health managers make better decisions under uncertainty. I got involved with The Carpentries in 2018 while doing my PhD and co-organizing R-Ladies Gainesville, and I’ve been teaching workshops and mentoring learners ever since. What keeps me coming back is the community: the people, the pedagogy, and the shared belief that computational skills should be accessible to everyone. These days I’m a tenure-track Assistant University Librarian for Computational Literacy at the University of Florida, with affiliate faculty appointments at the One Health Center of Excellence and the School of Natural Resources and Environment, where I help researchers across campus build the computational skills they need, collaborate on research, and support my own students. Outside of work (and workshops), you’ll find me on a soccer field, either coaching my kids’ teams or playing myself. My inner ecologist also takes any chance to get outside for hikes or bike rides with my family, ideally with a bird or tree to identify along the way.

Joey Bernard

Joey Bernard is a software developer with the Digital Research Alliance of Canada. He also teaches undergraduate classes in math, physics and computer science at the University of New Brunswick. He first got involved with Software Carpentry back in the mid 2010’s.

Pradeep Eranti

Pradeep is a bioinformatician who recently completed his PhD at Université Paris Cité, France, working on statistical genetics, multi-omics integration, and network-based approaches to complex diseases. He is passionate about reproducible and open science, community building, and making computational skills accessible to researchers from diverse backgrounds. Pradeep joined The Carpentries through Instructor Training in 2020 and has since contributed as a helper, host, and instructor for workshops on R for Reproducible Scientific Analysis. He looks forward to supporting new Instructors, learning from the Instructor Trainer community, and contributing to The Carpentries’ growth.

Andre Geldenhuis

I’m a Research DevOps Engineer at REANNZ (Research and Education Advanced Network New Zealand). I did my Masters in Physics before getting into computational work, as physicists are sometimes wont to do. I mainly work on Mahuika, our national HPC platform, but I also get to do some Software Carpentry teaching, which I really enjoy. I’m excited to take the step into instructor training! I like learning new things; lately I’ve been picking up crochet, which has been great fun.

Cecilia Baldoni

Cecilia Baldoni is a guest researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Konstanz, Germany, where she completed her PhD on seasonal brain size change in shrews. She teaches R and open science workflows, mentors early-career researchers, and is an active member of RLadies+, SORTEE and The Turing Way.

Daniel Kerchner

Daniel Kerchner is a Senior Software Developer at the George Washington University, in Washington, DC, USA, where he creates and teaches numerous workshops in R, Python, data analysis and visualization, open and reproducible research, and other topics, and shares his skills and insight with the GW community by providing individualized consultations to help students, faculty, and researchers succeed. Dan is also a PhD student in the Health Data Science, Bioinformatics in the GW Milken School of Public Health.

Dan has been a Carpentries instructor since 2018, has taught (and, in some cases, organized) 19 Carpentries workshops in the U.S. and internationally, including the specialized Genomics and Metagenomics Data Carpentry lessons. He is grateful for the opportunities that The Carpentries provides to share his passion for helping researchers gain practical coding and data skills, and he is excited to contribute in a new way by inspiring new instructors as an Instructor Trainer.

Ellen Bledsoe

Ellen Bledsoe (she/they) is an Associate Professor of Practice at the University of Arizona (USA), teaching in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment; depending on the moment, she identifies as a community ecologist, a data scientist, and/or an educator. She was introduced to The Carpentries and became a certified instructor during graduate school. Since then, much of her teaching experience has involved training ecology students in data science skills using best practices she learned in Instructor Training. She is excited to now become an Instructor Trainer to share her passion for inclusive data science education with others!

Giannis Savva

I’m an HPC application specialist at EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland. A physicist by training, I first got involved with The Carpentries as a helper during my PhD. Having done substantial teaching over the years, I really appreciated The Carpentries approach to teaching and eventually became an Instructor and now an Instructor Trainer. I still remember being confused by tools like git when I started using them, so I always put the effort to make concepts understandable and enable learners to connect the dots and find their “aha” moments. I’m grateful for The Carpentries community offering the space to learn from each other and grow together, and thankful to be able to contribute back.

Jennifer Reeve (she/her)

I am a Research Support Specialist at Research and Education Advanced Network New Zealand (REANNZ). I have a background in academia doing research in environmental microbiology and learning computational tools for my research is how I first found out about the Carpentries. I love the growth mindset and community that are central to the Carpentries and I am excited to help bring new Instructors into the community. Away from the Carpentries and work I enjoy traveling and getting outside, especially with my dog, as well as knitting and play video games at home when the weather isn’t cooperating.

Other Carpentries Instructor Trainers

Tannia Chevez from ACENET and Aman Goel from the Institute for Research Software also joined The Carpentries Instructor Trainer community.