OSCARS is a unique opportunity to involve the scientists in Open Science through the Cascading Grants mechanism. The results of the 1st Open Call demonstrate the strong interest of scientists in improving the tools for managing FAIR data to increase their re-usability and reproducibility. The large interest in OSCARS demonstrates the clear need for funding for enabling Open Science in the scientific community. There are currently very few alternative sources of funding for researchers.
Andy started his scientific career as a radio astronomer at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, followed by a position at the Max Planck Institut für Radioastronomie in Bonn, Germany. He then moved to France where he joined the European Synchrotron (ESRF) in 1988, first working on the accelerators control systems and then moving on to beamline controls, data processing and data management. He managed the Software Group for 15 years before stepping down in 2024 to spend more time on EOSC.
Andy currently leads the team implementing the ESRF data policy for scientific data and has been involved in EOSC since its beginnings. In 2019 he became coordinator of the Horizon 2020 project PaNOSC (Open Science for Photons and Neutrons in Europe). Today he coordinates the PaNOSC EOSC Node build-up. Since June 2024, Andy is seconded to work part-time for the EOSC Association as editor of the EOSC Federation Handbook.
He is passionate about Open Science, Open Source software, scientific data management, FAIR data, and EOSC.