The Global Biodata Coalition (GBC) is delighted to welcome seven new members to its Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC), strengthening the breadth of expertise that will guide GBC’s work to safeguard the world’s open life science, biological and biomedical data.
The SAC provides scientific advice to the GBC Board of Funders and Executive Head on the development and delivery of GBC’s mission. Five new members joined the Committee in July:
- Eric Green, Chief Medical Officer, Illumina, Inc., USA
- Namshik Han, Head of Computational Research & AI, Milner Therapeutics Institute, University of Cambridge, UK and Professor, Department of Quantum Information, Yonsei University, South Korea
- Gitte Neubauer, VP Omics Technologies GSK and Founder and Managing Director, Cellzome, Germany
- Guilherme Oliveira, Biodiversity strategy and nature impact consultant and Visiting Senior Professor, Department of Genetics, Universidade Federal do Pará, Brazil
- Saurabh Raghuvanshi, Professor in the Department of Plant Molecular Biology, University of Delhi South Campus, New Delhi, India
They are joined by Jeff Christiansen, Director of Australian BioCommons and Roderic Guigó, Professor of Bioinformatics and Coordinator of the Bioinformatics and Genomics Programme at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG).
Together, the new members bring diverse expertise spanning artificial intelligence, computational biology, genomics, plant science, biodiversity, biotechnology, health data and research infrastructure. Their perspectives will complement those of existing Committee members Varsha Khodiyar and Nicola Mulder, who continues as Interim Chair.
Philippe Sanseau, Executive Head of GBC, said: “I would like to thank all of our advisors who have recently stepped down from the committee and who helped oversee key decisions in early 2026 including the move to our new hosts EMBL-EBI and our growth since receiving EU funding in addition to member support.
We are thrilled to welcome eminent scientific leaders to the Scientific Advisory Committee. Their collective experience, across disciplines, sectors and regions will be invaluable as we deliver our new strategy over the next few years. The diversity of perspectives they bring will help us work with funders and biodata resource managers to build a more sustainable, resilient and equitable global biodata infrastructure.”
The expanded SAC complements GBC’s new strategy for 2026-2030, which commits to diversifying and expanding its community, developing practical approaches to sustainability, and improving the analytical capability that supports funding decisions. It will help ensure that GBC is aware of emerging issues and activities are fully informed by the needs and opportunities across the global biodata ecosystem.