We are pleased to announce the newly elected members of the DDI Executive Board and Scientific Board. Their terms will begin on July 1st and run for four years. We sincerely thank them for their willingness to serve and for their commitment to advancing the work of the DDI Alliance.
Alina Danciu
Biosketch
Alina Danciu is a team leader at Sciences Po, Paris. She specializes in DDI and CoreTrustSeal and is responsible for the repository, “Banque de données of the CDSP”. From 2022 to 2024, she co-coordinated the Alliance working group “DDI Training”. Since 2017, she has been part of the Program Committee of the EDDI conference and has been co-chair since 2025. She has been a member of the CoreTrustSeal board since 2024. She recently got funding as a PI of the project FAIRwDDI to work on research on FAIR and DDI, as well as DDI training resources and AI-assisted metadata curation.
Position Statement
Alina Danciu has been involved with the DDI community for over a decade, including a position as co-chair of the Training Group and a EDDI Program Committee membership. She is a « French advocate » of DDI. As a representative of a small archive whose strategy is to use the latest open technologies, Alina is interested in contributing to the increased adoption and evolution of the DDI products. Her previous experience in the Alliance and at Sciences Po helped her understand and be prepared for contributing to and implementing the strategic issues that an executive board is responsible for.
Steve McEachern
Biosketch
Steve McEachern is the Director of the UK Data Service. He was previously Director of the Australian Data Archive and an Associate Professor with POLIS at the Australian National University. Steve has high-level expertise in data archiving and survey methodology, and has been actively involved in development and application of methods and technologies in these areas for over 25 years in Australia, the UK and internationally. Steve is currently the vice-chair of the DDI Alliance Executive Board.
Katja Moilanen
Biosketch
Katja Moilanen is a metadata and modelling expert, currently serving as a Senior Specialist in the Finnish Social Science Data Archive. Her main areas of expertise include (meta)data harmonization, (meta)data management, information and process modelling and metadata models. She also has a long experience in digital research data preservation and dissemination. Katja has contributed to the CESSDA metadata office and several prominent EU projects, including OSTrails, COORDINATE, SSHOC. Her academic background spans both computer science (B.Sc., M.Sc.) and social science (B.Soc.Sci.), providing her with a unique interdisciplinary perspective. Katja has worked with DDI-Codebook since 2001.
Position Statement
The metadata landscape is evolving rapidly, driven by advancements such as AI. I aim to ensure DDI remains adaptable, agile and aligned in this changing environment.
Noemi Betancort Cabrera
Biosketch
Noemi Betancort Cabrera is metadata manager at the SuUB Library in Bremen and the Research Data Center Qualiservice for all kinds of qualitative research data from all disciplines in the social sciences. Noemi has been following the activities of the DDI since 2012 when she participated in the former DDI Qualitative Data Working Group. As part of Qualiservice she coordinates the metadata activities of QualidataNet, a network of archives and repositories of qualitative research materials (part of the German Social Science Consortium KonsortSWD (NFDI)). She also chairs the CDI Qualitative Data Subgroup as part of QualidataNet's goal to find FAIR solutions for the description of qualitative data.
Position Statement
Since joining Qualiservice in 2012, I have been interested in practical solutions to close the metadata gap in the description of qualitative data across disciplines. Furthermore, I am motivated to work on common solutions for FAIR description of all types of data, including qualitative data. In this regard, I would like to find ways in which qualitative data archives can also use DDI products to better structure unstructured material and thus contribute to its findability and interoperability on a metadata basis. Ultimately, to contribute to expand the use of DDI Alliance products to enable the FAIRification process for data from all communities and types.
Simon Hodson
Biosketch
Simon is Executive Director of CODATA and an expert on data policy and data stewardship. Most recently, he was coordinator of the groundbreaking WorldFAIR project, which is now being extended as an international collaborative initiative, WorldFAIR+, to advance the development and implementation of the Cross-Domain Interoperability Framework (CDIF). Simon has contributed to a number of landmark reports and policy documents: he chaired the European Commission’s Expert Group on FAIR Data which produced the Turning FAIR into Reality report. He was also vice-chair of the UNESCO Open Science Advisory Committee, with an influential role in drafting the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science.
Position Statement
Simon has served on the Scientific Board from 2021-2025 and is happy to be considered for another term. He is a strong supporter of the mission of the DDI Alliance and sees particular value in DDI-CDI. CODATA has supported the development and uptake of DDI-CDI in various ways and is determined to continue this strong collaboration. Simon is active in a number of European initiatives with DDI members and is keen to help increase the influence and membership of the DDI Alliance globally by maintaining a clear and compelling scientific work plan and strategy.
Amber Leahey
Biosketch
Amber Leahey is the Service Director for Borealis, the Canadian Dataverse Repository, a national research data repository service provided in partnership with academic libraries at over 80 research institutions across Canada. In her role she supports libraries and research institutions with technical data repository infrastructure to assist researchers with data deposit, discovery, sharing, reuse, and preservation. She is also the Data & GIS Librarian at Scholars Portal, the technical service provider for the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL), where she manages data repositories including Odesi and Scholars GeoPortal. Amber holds a Master of Library and Information Studies (MLIS) from the University of Toronto and has a background in survey and public opinion research.
Position Statement
Amber has been involved with the DDI community for over a decade, including a previous Scientific Board position (2015-2018) and as the Chair of the DDI Training Working Group (2017-2019). In her role at Scholars Portal and Borealis, she works to develop national research data services in Canada, utilizing and promoting the DDI standard to a wide audience. Today, Amber works closely in the areas of research data management (RDM) and digital preservation, developing repository and institutional policies to support best practices in data curation and long-term archiving of Canadian research data. Working closely with DDI Codebook, Amber would like to see future versions of Codebook be released and maintained for use in platforms such as the open-source Dataverse repository software. Amber is interested building greater adoption of DDI across the RDM ecosystem, including infrastructure for active data management and long-term preservation of data in generalist and disciplinary data repositories.
Hilde Orten
Biosketch
Hilde works as a senior advisor at Sikt – the Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research. With background from the European Social Survey and EU funded projects, her interests and current work focuses on interoperability between data from social surveys and environmental sciences, as well as other metadata and interoperability related tasks. Hilde is actively engaged in several working groups of the DDI Alliance, CDIF as well as the EOSC A Task Force for Semantic and Technical Interoperability.
Position Statement
Hilde has been serving for four years on the Scientific Board, 2021 to 2023 as vice-chair, and 2023-25 as chair, and is interested to continue as a member of the board if she is elected. She is interested in supporting the working groups in addressing new topics, exploring new technologies, promoting DDI to new user groups, put focus on interoperability between standards and implementation guides, as well as other topics in the Scientific Work Plan.
